Complaint of the Indifference of Things

We live in a world that, for the most part,
Doesn’t know us. We move as strangers
Among rocks, trees, rivers, mountains,
Unaware that we are here; even the house
We live in and are fond of, perhaps,
Has no knowledge of our existence; the rose
Can’t tell our touch from the touch of the wind,
And thousands of stars look out and do not see us.
As for other creatures, to most of them,
Except the domesticated ones, of course,
Who regard us, if at all, as magicians
Capable of the best and the worst, we occur
Chiefly as accidents, often unpleasant—
They have excommunicated us
From their society, who are crueller
Even than themselves, they are no longer
On speaking terms with us, we can’t
Come very close to any wild thing;
The wren that builds in the eaves of our dwelling
Knows of us only as probable menace,
As possible beneficence; and the ant,
Whose counties we take in our stride, and whose townships
We level with a step, has never heard of us,
Or, if he has, it is no more
Than our own dim sense of the unknown beings
Who bestride us here, as we the ant,
Or move among us invisible
And merciful as the best of us sometimes are
When we sidestep the ant-hill, ruthless
As the best of us sometimes have to be when the tragic
Nature of things makes it necessary.
There is something wistful in our attitude
Toward things—the beautiful indifference
Of mountains or of a flower. The conscious
Desires, and is envious of,
The unconscious: man envies the rock
Its strength, its self-sufficient calm
Outwardly at least, though it represents
The locked fury of billions of atoms—
He moves, lonely and a stranger, among
The things that surround him, with which to fall in love
Is like courting a woman who is asleep.
Oh, almost everything seems to be asleep,
And cannot respond: the rose will not answer,
Nor the earth reply to her lover, the moon
Is unmindful of the poet who addresses her.
Head over heels in love, we dwell
Among beautiful things, like outcasts,
Even while they abide in us,
Who have won them into ourselves and by a supreme
Act of love and faith given them
Another dimension, engendering on them,
Through the embrace of matter by spirit,
The divine reality born of this fusion,
So that they become other than they were:
The moon that shines in your consciousness
Is more than mere mass and luminous contour,
And the rhythm of the surf along the shore
More than mere water in motion, something
Important has been created through the embrace
Of matter by spirit. But, oh, how cold,
How indifferent is the response of that partner
To our burning love! I have sometimes thought
That the steady immersion of matter in spirit,
Throughout the ages, its being dipped
Again and again in the quivering, fleeting
Film of consciousness that overlies
The turning planet must, in time,
So saturate matter as to infect it
With spirit itself, and thus evoke,
In flower and tree, in wind and water,
The response for which we long; I have thought
That the brilliant sphere that out of dark heaven
Stares into a human mind,
Might almost in that mirror discover
Itself, in wonder, there—a star,
Become so at last through fusion with spirit,
Which, by a depth of love that is
Adoring perception, fulfills an otherwise
Unfulfilled creation. Nevertheless,
We have not roused nature from that sleep of hers—
Things remain things, we remain
Their lovers still, and wistfully
Dwell among them, who deeply abide in us,
Yet are ignorant of our presence here,
And will not know it when we are gone.