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The poem is astonishing. Its completeness is unassailable. Like a most perfect
droplet it quivers before us. We see it at a glance, we read it at a single
breath and yet it unfolds the most sublime of experiences: two have become
one, man and the Supreme, the son and the Father. Their oneness enables them
to reverse their roles: man is the Father, God the son. Theirs is a mutual
inhabitation. This subtle exchange is captured in the compound address "Father-Son."
It is further mirrored in the third line by the poet's use of the word "won"
at either end of the central phrase, to envelop it, as the Father and son
are enveloped by each other. This repetition of the word "won" is also bound
up with the delicate music of the poem. With the fine fingers of a musician,
the poet trills upon our heart with his single noteson, one, won, undone.
The music holds us at that point of ecstatic merging. The poet chooses not
to descant upon this union in descriptive language. However, by dwelling
upon it through this combination of rhyme and rhetorical word-play, he is
able to move us, to thrill our souls and engender a lyrical awareness. The
artistic experience of delight that we gain through this coalescence of sounds
into the one note gives us an intuition of the self-mergence of mystical
ecstasy. What is most striking perhaps is that the poet has accomplished this
internal mimesis of the ecstatic state through the simplest and most ordinary
of words. They become transfigured by their context while preserving a matter-of-factness
which more complex or unfamiliar words might have forsaken.

A companion piece to this poem might well be the poem entitled "Our Meeting
Place," also from My Flute. This poem is also structured on a tightly controlled
four-line stanzaic unit, but here the poet dwells on the absence of God:

OUR MEETING PLACE

0 Lord, my Master-Love, how far are we,
How far from ecstasy's silence-embrace?
Heavy is my heart with sleepless sighs and pangs:
I know my bleeding core, our meeting place. [75]