the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
--Denise Levertov (1923-1997) esteemed Anglo-American poet, convert to Roman Catholicism, daughter of a Welsh mother and a Russian Jewish father turned priest in the Church of England, from The Stream & the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes.
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