Nature Is Still OURS

What happens
Is that
The old
Fascination
Disappears
An echo remains
And you

[scratch rewind]

The old
Fascination
Disappears
An echo remains

[rewind]

The old
Fascination
Disappears
An echo remains
And you have, as it were
The
Vestige
Of mythology
The problem of our
Present
Age
Is to
Recreate
The mythology
For today
On which people
Will live
On which the society
Will grow
It is being done
It is being done well
People aren’t always looking in the right place for it
But it is
Taking shape
Our
Great artists
Our great poets
Our great scientists
Erwin Schrodinger’s
Little book
‘My View of the World’
This is a vision of a poet, and of a first-rate physical scientist
And it has the same song in it
That one reads and hears
In the old
Upanishads
And in the sayings of the great prophets

[Chorus]
Nature is still ours
It’s still ours
It is in us
It is in the universe
Nature is still ours
It’s still ours
It is in us
It is in the universe

Secondary to that
Is the social
Situation
Now in our society, the social problem is turned over largely to the police
And to
Congress
As a purely
Practical matter
However
The creatures
That constitute the society
These are today
The neighbor
They really are
The idea of a personal God
Living
Somehow
Somewhere else
Out there - there is no “out there” anymore
There is no “up there”
It’s awfully difficult
To
Validate
But it seems to me if one’s looking for the personality of God
It’s right here
In the multitudinous personalities of those
Around us

[Chorus]
Nature is still ours
It’s still ours
It is in us
It is in the universe
Nature is still ours
It’s still ours
It is in us
It is in the universe

Everything I find
In the poets
In the scientists
Who push through
To this
Mystery
Points
Not to the animals
As our neighbors
Not to the plant
Not to the planet
But to that
Other one
That “thou”
Whom you face
Who’s not the thou you would want him to be
He’s other
And it’s that recognition of otherness
That is absolutely basic and necessary
Now this doesn’t mean that you have to
Give up your otherness
In recognition of him
It may darn well be
Collision
But it has to be collision
With reverence
And respect