Philip Glass
Echorus
White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
As on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
Above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
Along a green crag
Glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—

Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
But what seen by one man in a vale in Albion
Of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology
The wisdom of earthly relations
Of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
Orchards of mind language manifest human
Of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
Flowеring above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
Bloomlеts angelic as lightbulbs—

Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
The lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
Heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
Clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!

All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
Undulating on mossy hills
A giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
On the mountainside
Whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
In granitic undertow down—
And lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
And lifted the grasses an instant in balance
And lifted the lambs to hold still
And lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave
A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale
A wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley
The length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
Tonned with cloud-hang
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance
One motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies
One Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
To the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
Through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—

No imperfection in the budded mountain
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together
Daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble
Grass shimmers green
Sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes
Horses dance in the warm rain
Tree-lined canals network live farmland
Blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills
Pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—

Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass
Each flower Buddha—eye, repeating the story
Myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
Doubled down the stem trembling antennae
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
Breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside
Smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless
Tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
Moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor
Trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain—beaded in the grass
Lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
Hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight
Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds
Visible is visible
Rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale
Gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain
Rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless
Breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
Drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
Through forests of gristle
My skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal
All Albion one

What did I notice? Particulars! The
Vision of the great One is myriad—
Smoke curls upward from ashtray
House fire burned low
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
Starless
Upward in motion with wet wind