I never saw the root of the real

In arboreal flare,

Nor witnessed this man walk on water,

Nor that one float in air.

 

I sat beneath the bodhi tree;

I felt my body itch.

Between the true cup and the false

I knew not which was which.

 

My eyes have never blown like fuses

Sparked black upon a wall,

No surge of sight or insight mine,

No whisper, and no call.

 

My thousand suns have been my twins,

My Beatrice, my wife,

My way to immortality

The living of the life—

 

No visage singed into a shroud

Or knotted in a tree.

A newborn in a swaddling-cloth

Was the vision given me:

 

Someday the faces round my sickbed

Will blur and superimpose

Into that single human Face

The visionaries know,

 

My humble human loves collected

And, for the first time, seen

Intensely, like diffraction

Narrowed to a beam.