the outcome, I can see....
Closer than any brother
Shall they be to one another
And to me,
Closer than mother, father, daughter, son,
O closer than a lover shall they be,
When madness like a storm shall roll
Away, leaving illumination. Within everyone
The nearness has begun
Toward some loved life and toward the soul
Perceived therein: the elemental ache to be made whole
With beauty and with love.--O I have ached and longed in the embrace
Of one I love to be undone
Of differences, to yield and run
Within the very blood and being of my dear,
One body and one face,
One spirit in all space,
Mingled and indissoluble. And I have felt a mortal tear
Smart on my lids, when I had been so near
To Celia that I knew not which was I,
Yet the day returned between us and the sky
Held distances that were not clear
To us and we were two again that had been almost one.

A mother yields herself to enter
Her child, who nestles close and sleeps
With all his wisdom pressed
For comfort to her breast.
I can remember my relinquishment
Of consciousness and care,
Almost of life, upon my mother's heart--the great content
Of being there.

And then I loved a starry boy of three,
Who looked about him, smiled and took to me,
Held out his arms and chose me among men
For his companion, to confide
His smiles in and to be
At ease with. Closely by my side
He sat and touched the world, to see
If it were solid and worth touching. When he died,
I too was dead ... and yet I hear him say,
Laughing within my heart today:
"Lo, being you,
And having lived your years, this will I do,
And this, and this!"
I have my boy again.
I greet him nearer than a kiss.

And so, from birth to death, out of confusion
The secret creeps
Across the deeps
From its eternal centre
In the soul.
Communion is the cause and the conclusion
And the unfailing sacrament
Not only of the mystical frequenter
Of temples, where the body of the dead
Creates divine
The living body through the bread
And wine,
But God discovers and discovers
His beauty in all lovers.
And, to make His beauty whole,
Body and body, soul and soul, combine
His one identity with yours and mine.

I know a fellow in a steel-mill who, intent
Upon his labours and his happiness, had meant
In his own wisdom to be blest,
Had made his own unaided way
To scho