A young family of four were found dead in their home in my neighborhood. Probably a murder suicide. — What fills a person until there is no room left.
What was too much, too painful, real or imagined — words or actions that pulled the trigger. Could words of another kind of world have changed their story?
Later that morning, searching for something beautiful, I stumbled on Auguries of Innocence. One of my favorites. To call it moving falls short. It’s painful in a way that guts you. But beautiful.
The hunted hare. Blake is furious and he wants you to feel every bit of it. And you do. I do. The world he was describing was real. But so was another world. Was it words like these?
If we dream of a world where stories of joy, hope, and kindness are abundant — the norm. What could be?
So I flipped it. Not to pretend the darkness away. But the same weight, pointed toward joy. Could that beauty stop the pain.
The words are still beautiful enough to make you cry. Blake saw a wound in every grain of sand. In this one a wild flower.
I went couplet by couplet through Blake’s original and wrote the opposite. The structure is his. The rhythm is his. The stakes are his — his words written for the whole universe. I just changed what happens.
❧
THE POEM
Auguries of Joy
After William Blake
✦
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast singing free
Calls the whole living world to see
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Links the chain all life depends on
A dog well loved at his Master's Gate
Predicts the flourishing of the State
A Horse well kept upon the Road
Shares the labor, shares the load
Each binkie leap from the wild Hare
Weaves life back through open air
A Skylark soaring on the wing
Signs a living, healthy thing
The Game Cock free to greet the dawn
Turns the nutrients right along
Every Wolf's & Coyote's tender care
Keeps the whole system strong and fair
The wild deer, resting here & there
Tends the land beyond compare
The Lamb well loved breeds public peace
Regenerates what we release
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Does what nothing else can achieve
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Keeps the balance, holds it right
The child who shelters the little Wren
Earns the love of all of them
Who soothes the weary Ox at rest
Returns the care it gave its best
The gentle child who frees the Fly
Feels the web that underlies
Who tends the Chafer underground
Keeps the living soil sound
The Caterpillar on the Leaf
Becomes the proof beyond belief
Spare the Moth and Butterfly
See the living world reply
Who teaches the Horse to trust
Fulfills a partnership robust
The Beggar's Dog & Widow's Cat
Feed them & the world grows back
The cicada that sings his Summer's song
Starts the chain all Summer long
The kindness of the Hand & Seed
Is the nectar of the Kindom
The beauty of the native Bee
And native plants — the master key
The Prince who shares the Beggar's bread
Turns all the Miser's rust to gold instead
A Truth that's told with open heart
Cradles what cruelty tore apart
It is right it should be tinder
We bloom from Joy — a garden, kinder
And when this we rightly tend
Through the World we gently bend
Where Nature and people intertwine
Joy & Wonder woven fine
Under every hope & vine
Mycelium weaves the design
The Babe is more than swaddling bands
Needs living soil beneath its hands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a star in Eternity
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
All return when conditions so right
Nature shows us the garden grows
Through her eyes our compassion sows
Which was born in Light to bloom in Light
When given room to grow aright
We are Life in every form
We are water — we are them.
❧
Written in the spirit of William Blake, 1757–1827
Cindee Travis Klement
