Although we were not. I was still the same,
     Knowing myself yet being someone other—
     And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
     And so, compliant to the common wind,
     Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
     Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
     We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.

The priest looked about the extravagant paddock
     A few hundred faces, mostly strangers to him
     Though none stranger than himself to him
And well beyond the few he knew, he perceived
     A persistent pattern: joy tinged with sadness
     Doubt mingling with desire
In concord at this place and time
      Excluding no one and nothing, not even the worst
      Knowing and unknowable entwined