If the dust gets into your eyes,

Then the points of the four directions

Are all mixed up to you. If gnats

Puncture your skin, it keeps you

Throughout all night from sleeping.

If you would cause yourself not to lose

Your natural simplicity and if you’d

Also imitate the wind in its easy motion

And stand forth in all natural attributes

Belonging to you—why must you use

So much energy to seek for your mate

Whom you have lost a long time ago?

The snow-goose does not bathe every day

To make itself white, nor the raven

Blacken itself at night to make itself black.

The natural simplicity of their black

And white does not afford any ground

For controversy; and the fame and praise

That we so much like to contemplate

Do not make us greater than we really are.

When the springs supplying the pools

Are dried up, the fishes huddle together

On the dry lake bed. Than that they should

Moisten one another there by their gasping

And keep one another wet by their urine,

It would be better for them to forget

One another in the rivers and lakes. . .

If you wish to keep someone, set one free.