Sagesse “10”

Or is it a great tide that covers the rock-pool

so that it and the rock are indistinguishable

from the sea-shelf and are part of the sea-floor,

though the sea-anemone may quiver apprehensively

and the dried weed uncurl painfully

and the salt-sediment rebel, "I was salt,

a substance, concentrated, self-contained,

am I to be dissolved and lost?"

"it is fearful, I was a mirror, an individual,"

cries the shallow rock-pool, "now infinity

claims me; I am everything? but nothing";

peace, salt, you were never as useful as all that,

peace, flower, you are one of a thousand-thousand others,

peace, shallow pool, be lost.

Source: Hermetic Definition (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1972)