People of Oceanic Impulse – whose
Moral currents Sweep toward the wide,
Infolding Ocean of Undiscovered Deep²
The Perfect person employs their Mind
As a Mirror: it grasps Nothing, it refuses
Nothing – it Receives but does not Keep³
One feels 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 Grandeur⁴
They Are and are Possible and Widen Possibility⁵
Their Conversation Seldom, Laughter as the Breeze,
That dies away in Dimples among the pensive trees⁶
The Sage Abides in the Condition of Unattached
Action and Carries out the Wordless Teaching⁷
A Quiet person who Explains Nothing and
Defends Nothing but only Knows where
The Rarest Wildflowers are Blooming⁸
Every Joint of every Finger contains
A Teaching as if it Speaks, Breathes,
Shines – and is Scented with Truth⁹
The Things which they Practice
Are said Not Yet to be Known¹⁰
¹ Denise Levertov, Your Spirits Appeased
² Sam Walter Foss, The Coming American
³ Chuang Tzu, quoted by Alan Watts, The Psychology of Acceptance
⁴ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁵ Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie, Possible
⁶ Emily Dickinson, The Only Ghost
⁷ Lao Tzu tr. Charles Muller, Tao Te Ching II
⁸ Wendell Berry, I Dream of a Quiet Man
⁹ Hermann Hesse tr. Joachim Neugroschel, Siddhartha
¹⁰ Henry David Thoreau, Walden