MESSAGE FROM HOME

Do you remember when you were a child,
Nothing in the world seemed strange to you?
You perceived, for the first time, shapes already familiar,
And seeing, you knew that you had always known
The lichen on the rock, fern-leaves, the flowers of thyme,
As if the elements newly met in your body,
Caught up into the momentary vortex of your living
Still kept the knowledge of a former state;
In you retained recollection of cloud and ocean,
The branching tree, the dancing flame.

Now, when nature's darknes seems strange to you,
And you walk, an alien, in the streets of the city,
Remember earth breathed you into her with the air, with the sun's rays,
Laid you in her waters asleep, to dream
With the brown trout among the milfoil roots,
From substance of star and ocean fashioned you,
At the same source conceived you
As sun and foliage, fish and stream.

Of all created things the source is one,
simple, single as love; remember
the cell and the seed of life, the sphere
that is, of child, white bird, and small blue dragonfly.