MONKS

It is no small thing to wake up
And find tiny brown monks
Suspended from the branches of pines

Singing their hymns
Chanting their orisons
Tapping their bells,

Fastened to fingertips, together;
But when they turn away,
Showing only their brown backs,

Looking like oak leaves, wrinkled,
Blown into the wrong trees
Falling into silence

As into deep centuries
The only sound the green wind of time:
It is that

Their slight revolution, a half-turn,
The moon turning its dark side,
It is that,

The great, the unacceptable thing.