When the word has been conveyed to you
does not the sound seem to say
the word ought to grow and I should diminish?
The way in the forest the clearings
hold the morning mists.
The way on the pond the raindrops
fall one by one from the trees,
and each drop makes a circle,
and there are circles within those circles,
and all of the circles are widening
and widening and overlapping,
until the dark surface of the pond
is a pattern of overlapping circles,
bigger and smaller and smaller and bigger,
and all of them are moving,
and all of them are dying.
At their widest point they all disappear.
How I stand and watch this.
The sound of the voice has made itself heard,
and has gone away,
as though it were saying, my joy is complete.
See Office of Readings for Advent, Liturgy of the Hours Volume I, p. 261