Even now the smell of the people clung to my hair and clothes, a rotten sweetness of oil and musk that smells like death, it hung in my hair. Their voices went on and on in my head, monotonous waves wearing my mind away;— rock is worn by the waves to sand. I wanted to shut my mind, that my thoughts might close on my own peace,  I wanted to close the peace of my love in my heart like dew in a dark rose. He told us to rest. We went in a small ship, the wind and water moving in her, She lived in their sweetness of life, a bride. Her sail a white wing, unmoving, moved with the tide. She lay to the wind, and we gave our hearts with a sigh to the breath of the spirit of love.

But when we came to the shore the people were there; they had found us out. Always the open hand, always the blind eyes, always the deaf ears, always the wounds to be healed! They were there, swarming there, everywhere, insects there in the sun when someone has lifted a stone. I knew they would drain Him and wring Him out—wring Him out to the last drop of the fountain water of life.

I was sick of it all with a dry husk for a heart. But He saw the flocks wanting shepherd and fold, Pity in Him rose in a clear spring For the world’s thirst, and love was a pastureland.

So it went on all day Always the open hand, Always the dull mind, Always the slow heart Always the nameless fears, And self-pity, self-pity and tears;

Until the sun went up in the blaze of the day’s heat And with red wine burning through thin gold It was lowered slowly onto the altar stone Of the darkening world, where the sheep were in fold.

We thought ‘now it is night, He will send them away’ “The hour is late,” we said, “this is a desert place,  send them away, Lord, to buy food and be fed!” But He “you give them to eat!”

The grass in that place shone exceedingly green, I remember, because when the brain is dust, The cool greenness of grass is absurdly sweet.

“There is a lad here,” said Andrew, “with two little fish and five loaves of bread, but what are these if this crowd must be fed?” “Bid them sit down on the grass and give them to eat,” the Lord said.

The lad was one of the crowd, he went as he came. As long as the world lasts, the world will remember him, But no one will know his name!

They sat down on the grass. My heart contracted, my mind was withered up, But Christ poured out His tenderness, Like wine poured out into a lifted cup.

Always the open hands, Always the blind eyes, Always the mouth to be fed, And I for one was emptied out like a husk That has scattered its seed upon hard ground. But He saw the flocks wanting shepherd and fold; Pity in Him rose in a clear spring For the world’s thirst, and love was a pastureland.

The Lord blessed the bread. He put it into our hands And it multiplied, Not in His hands but in mine!

Even now, remembering this, My thoughts shut like a folding wing, My mind is a blank sheet of light In the mystery of the thing.

I gave and my hands were full, again and again; Pity in Him fell on my dry dust, It was summer rain, And the husk of my heart expanded and filled again, And was large with grain.

For me, the miracle was this, That a clear stream of the Lord’s love (not mine) flowed out of my soul, a shining wave, over my fellow men. 

These things I have told you happened a long while since. Our cherished Lord is dead, He was crucified. Now, as then, we go about in the crowd telling His love, and how He rose from the dead, and risen in us He lives in the least of men. But I think nobody understands, until I touch their wounds and they know the healing of His hands.

On the night of the Pasch, before He died, He blessed the bread and put it into my hands, to increase and be multiplied to the end of time.

Now if I turned my face away from the market place, I should be haunted, hearing the rustle of wheat in the darkness, striving, pushing up to the light. I should hear His words falling like slow tears in the Supper room,— when He prayed that we all be one, even as they are one, the Father and Son,— falling like slow tears over the sown fields, and I should see the world like a young field of wheat growing up for the grain watered by Christ’s tears.

Always the open hands, always the blind eyes, always the slow mind, always the deaf ears, and always Christ, Our Lord, crowned with the flowering thorn and ringed with spears.