There is an island of the innocent

and it shall be delivered. Yes, it shall be delivered (we are told) and there where they dwell - the wide-eyed, the slow-tongued, the yet to be informed, standing without knowledge among stones or flowers - there shall the saving word be brought and broken, and shared as intimately as bread on hillside or shore. There among those who do not know and so are vulnerable, and so err as children who seize what is not theirs or grasp at fire, or fall down to rage, bewildered, at an unexplained world - there in the shadowy grottos and groves of an untaught place instruction shall be borne: deliverance come by (it is written) the clean hands. I hold out my hands. As still Ah still! how the island awaits that touch - that call -