One Body Libretto

I. The One Blood of the Allmind

All life is interrelated.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
— Martin Luther King

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me,
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe.
— Walt Whitman

Let me explain: we all of us live in many worlds,
worlds made up of the color of our skins, the size of our noses, the amount of our incomes, the condition of our teeth,
our capacity for joy, pain, fear and reverence, the way we walk, the sound of our voices;
and there is above these little worlds another world which is common to all:
the world of what is everywhere on earth.
— Kenneth Patchen

Which sixteenth part makes one an Other?
All mellifluent
How to separate the one drop from the river's source?
Tinted, not tainted, by chromosome eleven
The only race is human
Bloodsiblings A B O AB
— John Kennedy

If we are all members of one body, then in that one body
there is neither male nor female;
or rather, there is both:
it is an androgynous or hermaphroditic body,
containing both sexes.
— St. Augustine

The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred
No matter who it is, it is sacred—
Each belong here or anywhere just as much as the well-off,
just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)
— Walt Whitman

II. One Anima

"Specious" – from Latin species, "appearance," from specere, "to look at"

To look at the face of all
The common visage of animals
The eyes of any creature
Look into the same river
Where we swim together
In the wide gene pool
The greater organism which is us all
The one soul, one anima, of the one body
From the primoment of yesterday
We are only beginning to see
— John Kennedy

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
— Joy Harjo

III. The Body of Gaia —Prayer for the Great Family

The entire range of living matter on earth,
from whales to viruses, from oaks to algae
constitute a single living entity...
self-regulating and endowed with faculties and powers
far beyond those of its constituent parts.
— James Lovelock

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day—
and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf
and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind
and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent
Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
self-complete, brave, and aware
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep — he who wakes us —
in our minds so be it.
Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars —and goes yet beyond that ...
beyond all powers, and thoughts
and yet is within us ...
Grandfather Space.
The Mind is his Wife.
so be it.
— Gary Snyder

IV. On the Beach At Night Alone

The body of the world broken into pieces is the body of god.
The center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.

On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought
of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe
All lives and deaths all of the past, present, future,
The vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
— Walt Whitman

V. To the Power and Beauty of Everybody

IF A POEM CAN BE HEADED INTO ITS PROPER CURRENT
SOMEONE WILL TAKE IT WITHIN HIS HEART
TO THE POWER AND BEAUTY OF EVERYBODY

in the purest thought
When vanity and desire of all mortal ends
Have been submerged
We may join the thinking which is eternally around us
And be thought about
For the common good
Of the one creature everything is
We can only be humble before it
We can only worship ourselves because we are part of it
The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths
I speak of the music of the silence
As being what is left when the singers and the dancers
Have grown still
Something is left there
A part of the reverence and of the need
A part of the fear and the pain and the wonder
And it goes on there
Coming from where it came from (O beautiful goddess!)
And reaching for what it can have little awareness of
A rhythm quite unlike any we know here
Bound and swayed as we are by the blood's orchestration
Bound and swayed as we are by the orchestration within us
By the deceptive orchestration of the blood
And I speak of the goddess
I speak of the goddess
I speak of the beautiful goddess
O tell them what I would say
— Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen texts used with the permission of Miriam Patchen.

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