Encounters

If you knew the visions

And the sudden intuitions

That are my lot,

What radiations grow out of a dot

As small as the markings on a beetle;

You no longer would hold back

When I say that Troy

Is as near to me as that broken toy.

You would not even ponder

When I say that Charlemagne

Passed me in the street;

And I have seen Shakespere and Shelley meet.

It is not strange to me

That poets and beggars long dead,

Pass each other, and like you, go to bed.