Annotation Poem by Robert Gray

It has always seemed to me that neutral things would help us
if only we could hear
the eloquence
of their dumb ministry.

What is it that these things of the world do?
They submit,
and they endure.
They flourish. They don't ask for anything.

They simply take what is given.
They flourish,
all at once, where it had seemed they were merely enduring.
Everything can touch them.

We are searching for the world, amongst this diversity
of existence,
that has formed itself so loosely
in a ramshackle system.

While our lives, one can see, are just a routine sacrifice,
consumed and forgotten,
off somewhere to one corner
in the courts of the sun.

What can last? Only what we have made
and hand on
amongst ourselves, that is withering in our hands,
but never known without us.

So we take the dark roads
in beautiful clothing, greeting each other;
sorry for the void
that cannot see what we've become.