The Immanent God

See your God in the jelly-fish, 
Sucking salty food. 
See Him drift in the gulf-weed, 
In shark-bellies brood. 
See Him feed with the gull there, 
In a grey ship's wake. 
Feel Him afresh 
In your own hot flesh 
When into lust you break. 

Hear His wrath in the hurricane, 
Hushing a hundred lives. 
Hist His heave in the earthquake, 
In volcano hives. 
Hark His stride in the plague-wind, 
Over a sterile shore: 
Down in a mine 
Behold what wine 
Of coal-damp He will pour. 

Aye, and there in the ribaldry 
Of a night-wench's song 
Hear Him—or on a child's lips 
Cursing a slum-mate's wrong. 
Stark He starves in the street there, 
Or, full-fed, will go: 
He, your God, 
In every clod 
Or clot of human woe. 

And—in every infamy 
Loathed by you with shame. 
Clear of the saddest soul-stench 
None can keep His name. 
Man's, you may say, all crime is, 
But Who gave man birth? 
Spawn of the years 
Is he—with tears 
And strife to give him worth. 

Spawn of the Universes, 
God's great flesh and bone. 
Stars are the cells that float there, 
Through lymph-ether strown. 
Dying, living, and dead there, 
Coming again to birth 
Out of a Womb 
That was their Tomb 
Are they—and is our earth. 

Such is your Immanent God—yea, 
Evil as well as good, 
Vileness even as beauty 
Holds His strange Godhood. 
Great He seems in the sea's surge, 
Fair in a woman's face, 
Yet with the worm 
He feeds a term 
On every goodly grace. 

Spirit, then, you may hold Him, 
High of plan and hope. 
But world-flesh does He strive with, 
Yearn like us—and grope; 
So must ever and oft seem 
Avid to escape 
From the hid yeast 
That moulds the least 
Of all things to His shape. 

Spirit, may be—or haply 
We had known no growth, 
But in a slime primeval 
Still would dwell in sloth. 
Yet if such is His Being, 
Finite is His need. 
To the same ends 
As earth He wends 
And journeying must bleed.