Great and Small

You “think yourself a great man

Because you live in a little world.”

Better it is, I think,

To be a small man

In a wide world,

To see your gaze stretch far and sink

Inside the wonders in the depths of every night,

The magic in each word the poets write.

And even better yet, perhaps,

To be a right-sized man

In a right-sized world,

To find your place

And fill that sacred space

With great reserves of love, and then collapse

The borders of your heart until

Each little grain of living wraps

A world within itself, where atoms spill

Upon your soul

And make the wider world whole.

I read a Samuel Butler's translation of The Odyssey last month, and the quote at the beginning of this poem is from near the end of that work. It's a phrase that struck me as I read it, and this poem is simply my effort to think about it a little bit.