Sometimes

 

Sometimes, when a bird calls, or a wind moves through the brush, or a dog barks in a distant farmyard, I must listen a long time, and hush. My soul flies back to where, before a thousand forgotten years begin, the bird and the waving wind were like me, and were my kin. My soul becomes a tree, an animal, a cloud woven across the sky. Changed and unfamiliar it turns back and questions me. How shall I reply?

--Herman Hesse