How greenly leaves rejoice, when it has rained
(waxy or tender, serrate, eggpocked, lobed)
Their veins run weighed
with thick green praise
And in each leaf: each chloroplast, each cell
Sings its Holy! Holy! A thousand thousand,
countless voices swell
in each one leaf
To see one singing, teeming, eager hand
flung out, meek and fearless, to grow, to feed
with its unseeable
small givings and receivings
Unbearable its hope! For human hearts
are grown too narrow, and too etiolate
to hold such weight
of bold rejoicing
as surges in the cells of one green leaf.
And God is kind. He grants our eyes relief
with tens, with hundreds--
We can bear thousands.
To our scraped hearts, leaves in their thousands drown
each leafsong's thousandfold rejoicing sound
in one great peace
of green
