They are people of Oceanic impulse—
Whose moral currents sweep toward the
Wide, infolding ocean of undiscovered Deep.²
Every joint of every finger contains a Teaching
As if it speaks, breathes, shines—and is scented with Truth.³
We feel their power as augmentation of their character:
They cannot make an empty gesture
Or say a word that is not heard—
They know, and the knowledge gives them Reality:
A substantiality of being—a human Grandeur.⁴
The perfect person employs their mind as a Mirror:
They grasp nothing, refuse nothing—
They Receive but do not keep:⁵
The Sage abides in the condition of
Unattached Action and carries out
The wordless Teaching.⁶
Their Conversation seldom, their Laughter as the breeze,
That dies away in dimples among the pensive trees …⁷
They are quiet people who explain Nothing and
Defend nothing but only know where
The Rarest Wildflowers are blooming.⁸
The things which they Practice
Are said not yet to be known:⁹
They are—and are possible—
And Widen Possibility—¹⁰
¹ Denise Levertov, Your Spirits Appeased
² Sam Walter Foss, The Coming American
³ Hermann Hesse tr. Joachim Neugroschel, Siddhartha
⁴ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁵ Chuang Tzu, quoted by Alan Watts, The Psychology of Acceptance
⁶ Lao Tzu tr. Charles Muller, Tao Te Ching II
⁷ Emily Dickinson, The Only Ghost
⁸ Wendell Berry, I Dream of a Quiet Man
⁹ Henry David Thoreau, Walden
¹⁰ Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Possible