12 New orchids or unimagined seas? So, in our style of verse and life The oldest idiom may reveal A smile never seen, limbs retain A virginal veracity and every stone Be as original as when the world was made. Yet as we progress From the things we think are known To what we are so sure can easily be mastered, Sly rust encrusts the aspiration, Youth runs out of song Until one learns to start again -- Love of life can always be renewed. To own a singing voice and a talking voice, A bit of land, a woman and a child or two, Accommodated to their needs and changing moods And patiently to build a life with these; A bit of land, a woman and a child or two Accommodated to their needs and changing moods, Practising a singing and a talking voice Is all the creed a man of God requires, He has to build something with able hands And knowing eyes, with some instructions From his parents, ancestors and friends, Altered slightly here and there to suit his strength. He has to silence no one but himself And walk occasionally on alien land To know the various lives and dreams of men, And show his deep affection for the world With words emerging from a contrite heart. The pure invention or the perfect poem, Precise communication of a thought, Love reciprocated to a quiver, Flawless doctrines, certainty of God, These are merely dreams; but I am human And must testify to what they meano For consider how I win redemption In the private country of my mind Where the worser part, as Socrates would say, Presides. Subsidised by dreams alone The stubborn workman breaks the stone, loosens Soil, allows the seed to die in it, waits Patiently for grapes or figs and even Finds, on a lucky day, a metaphor Leaping from the sod. If this is not a miracle Then I am Godo