to exist clearly

.

.

Last evening a city man

Was talking in the hotel door

To everyone, including me.

.

He talked of justice, of the struggle to obtain

Justice, of the workers

Suffering: of unending work

Of hungry men, of rich men turning

Their backs to it all.

.

Then, looking at me, he saw me with tears

In my eyes.  He smiled, happy,

Thinking I felt the same hatred he felt

And the compassion

He claimed to feel.

.

(But I was hardly listening to him.

What do I care about people

And what they suffer, or suppose they suffer?

Let them be like me - they will not suffer.

All the ill in the world comes from people interfering

With one another:

Wanting to do good, wanting to do evil.

Our soul, heaven and earth, these are enough:

To want more is to lose these and be wretched.)

.

What I was thinking when this friend of man

Spoke (and this moved me to weep)

Was that the far murmur of cowbells

In the evening air

Was nothing like small chapel bells

Where flowers and brooks might have heard Mass

Along with simple souls

Simple as mine.

.

(Praise be to God I am not good and have

The natural selfishness of flowers

And rivers, going on their way

Concerned only, and not knowing it,

To flower and go.

This is the only mission in the world:

This - to exist clearly

And to know how

Without thinking about it.)

.

The man fell silent,

He viewed the setting sun.

But what have sunsets to do

With haters and lovers?

.

~ Thomas Merton

from the Portuguese of Fernando Pessoa

#8, of twelve poems from The Keeper of Flocks

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