holiness does not dissolve, - Denise Levertov

I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

"Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

("A Tree Telling of Orpheus")"

I witnessed
all things quicken to color, to form
my question
not answered but given
its part
in a vast unfolding design lit
by a rising sun.