The City Limits | Text of the Poem

When you consider the radiance, that it does not
withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into
every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when
you consider
that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the
light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when
you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest
swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon
them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you
consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the
glow-blue
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming
the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in
no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when
you consider
that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf,
rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take,
then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks
about, the
leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and
the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May
bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to
praise.