Classic Poem

Thought looking out on thought
Makes one an eye.
One is the mind self-blind,
The other is thought gone
To be seen from afar and not known.
Thus is a universe very soon.

The immense surmise swims round and round,
And heads grow wise
Of marking bigness,
And idiot size
Spaces out Nature,

And ears report echoes first,
Then sounds, distinguish words
Of which the sense comes last—
From mouths spring forth vocabularies
As if by charm.
And thus do false horizons claim pride
For distance in the head
The head conceives outside.

Self-wonder, rushing from the eyes,
Returns lesson by lesson.
The all, secret at first,
Now is the knowable,
The view of flesh, mind's muchness.

But what of secretness,
Thought not divided, thinking
A single whole of seeing?
That mind dies ever instantly
Of too plain sight foreseen
Within too suddenly,
While mouthless lips break open
Mutely astonished to rehearse
The unutterable simple verse.