The Secret Splendour

(On my fiftieth birthday, for the ultimate future)

The whole world is poverty-stricken now: what shall

Men give to him who has freed the shadowless All

From his own blinded form and narrow name?

The prisoner Light that strains towards diamond-flame

Out of the quenching carbon has now sprung,

Boundlessly white, illimitably young.

Up through small head, through fragile feet below!

Nothing of me but facets the God-glow

In which the secret wealth of the universe

Sits in immense self-sight no weeping blurs.

What will you give me when the Eternal One,

Whose spark is your very soul, I' ve made my own?

25.11.53

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