There Are A Hundred Paths

Do You Love This World? Do You Cherish Your Humble And Silky Life? Do You Adore The Green Grass, With Its Terror Beneath?

Keep Some Room In Your Heart For The Unimaginable.

Listen--are You Breathing Just A Little, And Calling It A Life?

If You Suddenly And Unexpectedly Feel Joy, Don't Hesitate. Give In To It. There Are Plenty Of Lives And Whole Towns Destroyed Or About To Be. We Are Not Wise, And Not Very Often Kind. And Much Can Never Be Redeemed. Still Life Has Some Possibility Left. Perhaps This Is Its Way Of Fighting Back, That Sometimes Something Happened Better Than All The Riches Or Power In The World. It Could Be Anything, But Very Likely You Notice It In The Instant When Love Begins. Anyway, That's Often The Case. Anyway, Whatever It Is, Don't Be Afraid Of Its Plenty. Joy Is Not Made To Be A Crumb.

I Thought The Earth Remembered Me, She Took Me Back So Tenderly, Arranging Her Dark Skirts, Her Pockets Full Of Lichens And Seeds. I Slept As Never Before, A Stone On The River Bed, Nothing Between Me And The White Fire Of The Stars But My Thoughts, And They Floated Light As Moths Among The Branches Of The Perfect Trees. All Night I Heard The Small Kingdoms Breathing Around Me, The Insects, And The Birds Who Do Their Work In The Darkness. All Night I Rose And Fell, As If In Water, Grappling With A Luminous Doom. By Morning I Had Vanished At Least A Dozen Times Into Something Better.