I

No minor rituals.

If a son 's quarter-century of closing the house-door

And making lights prolongs his father's and before

There need not be remote horns

For the north chamber, strings

Nearer and last. Acknowledgment

Is the silence, the repeated same grave movements.

Time is record, not ritual.

Bells ring, calendars remind us,

Birthdays and spring tempt us

Into celebrations, and memory

Insists on heroes' bi-centennials.

This is imitation, fear of the dark, a fear

Of non-history, and no name. It is not ritual.

For the first book,

The occupation of a public building,

A rise in rank, a departure,

Let there be graceful acceptance,

A so be it, with joy in the gesture.

No minor rituals.

A dog is a dog. Man has his dignities.

He stands up in his civilization, in sun,

In moments of larger and achieved light.

II

The cutting of hair, child or man, is necessary.

Let it be without ceremony, but with a concern

For honor of the body's parts.

Give the body sleep, pleasure.

Think that it deserves rooms

It moves in, and undresses in,

Measured and multiplied by it, think its voice

And color of thought lifts walls and fills spaces. A king putting on clothes,

A woman robing her famous beauty,

Is attended, in luxury and without haste,

And the coming and going, the subtle skills,

Are amenities, the courtesies of a game.

We are not royal.

But lest we forget the astonishing hands,

heir many-motioned wrists and tipped fingers,

The complex eyes, the warm rounding flesh,

Let the caring of body be serious and thankful.

III

The mighty rituals

Are not for man's becoming, but being,

Not for the occasions of life, but for life.

IV

Such processionals as were never soon, from horizons marched,

Quartering a continent, from east, from north, west, south,

Pouring thunders of voices, all to converge,

And after the utmost re-enactment, centered

In a crash of banners, one voice,

For all the voices one speaking -

That would be worth it all to all.

One saying,

I live, I am.

All saying,

We live, we are.

The echoes carry it away, and the marchers

Following the echo, quartering,

Divide again, shouting,

The columns become files.

Then a few walking,

Then one,

And one,

I am.

V

None who has been there forgets, they never forget the ritual.

Coming together for meals they still see shadows of banners.

They hear the millioning feet at street-corners, and a turning

Is a triumph of faces turned, all toward the long street's end.

Lighting fires, or lifting the hat, arms in a world of mirrors

Accompany the one arm, the simplest gesture grave and proud.

We speak to one another innocently, the same thing this morning

About weather we said here to the same marcher here yesterday,

In the secret language saying, We have been at the thunder's

Midmost center when it all ceased and one voice said, I am.

Death, we say,

Has come nearer.

We say, Life

Is ours still.

A child, we say,

Was born to me.

Teach it ritual.

Glory, we say,

Pours on us.

We say, terror

Crowded us.

We are older.

Time is passing.

Ritual stays.

No one overhearing us

Could imagine the unspoken meaning or words.

But the two old marchers standing now

Face to face, need not be more than casual.

Memory magnifies their nodded phrases.

The least of us

Mingled and flowed once, rode the river that filled the place

Of yea-saying, and shivered in the shouted I am, we are.

After that sky-reaching, that all-giving bodied

Symbol, the coin struck and the striker of coins,

After the halt and pattern of position resolved,

And the fountain of meaning

Exploded

And wind wetting us from the blown crown,

Gusts of music livening the poled flags,

And after the dispersal,

Slow and shallow to the four horizons,

Not processional, but a loose walking,

We are alone, in pale days.

In such emptiness

We perform rituals.

VI

And we fill our days with ritual, not unimportant,

Nor graceless, nor without instruction, nor alone.

We never speak of what we

Remember.

At the time for punishing our children

The anger is for ourselves, our failure.

We know this. It has always been known.

There is a way in which to receive gifts,

And another to give, and both difficult.

We know this. There are words to be said.

There are words for pity, a certain few.

At the times when leaping into the air

Is the only appropriateness, we have ways

Of not leaping, knowing it is the same.

We know when to touch a friend We know

How cousins are to be greeted. We know

How to acknowledge hurt by ignoring it.

There is a way of standing still to listen.

The gestures are simple with the hand.

Each tells the great lie, that he is well.

Each accepts it, or all would be stricken.

We know the right words for departures.

It is a matter of life and death. We know

A hundred colors of one word in speaking,

And what the eyes do, and the placing

Of this half moment in the grand design.

Nothing is done without intention. Nothing unrelated is done.

Nothing meaningless is ever done. Nothing is lost. Nothing alone.

Above all, the laws remind us, no action is single or the doer alone.

The ritual is in the accompaniment.

Have done, are doing, and will do

Rise in their places like a choir,

The signal comes, the music begins. I am singing. We are singing.