The Knowledge of Light Henry Rago I The willow shining From the quick rain, Leaf, cloud, early star Are shaken light in this water: The tremolo of their brightness: light Sung back in light. II The deep shines with the deep. A deeper sky utters the sky. These words waver Between sky and sky. III A tree laced of many rivers Flows into a wide slow darkness And below the darkness, flowers again To many rivers, that are a tree. IV Wrung from silence Sung in lightning From stone sprung The quickening signs lines quivered Numbers flew Darkness beheld Darkness and told Each in each The depths not darkness. V To know Meaning to celebrate: Meaning To become “in some way” Another; to come To a becoming: To have come well. VI Earth Awakens to the work it wakens. These dancers turn half-dreaming Each to the other, glide Each from a pool of light on either side Below the dark wings And flutter slowly, come slowly Or drift farther again, Turn on a single note, lifted, And leap, their whirling lines Astonished into one lucidity: Multiples of the arc. Shapes of the heart! VII The year waits at the depth of summer. The air, the island, and the water Are drawn to evening. The long month Is lost in the evening. If words could hold this world They would bend themselves to one Transparency; if this Depth of the year, arch of the hour Came perfect to The curving of one word The sound would widen, quietly as from crystal, Sphere into sphere: candor Answering the child’s candor Beyond the child’s question.
