‘Teach me love that I may learn to love,’ said the rock

‘If I taught it you wouldn’t love it,’ said the earth

‘I’d love it so! Teach me, I promise not to mock.’

‘If you’d love it, by now you’d teach it with all mirth.’

‘But I have no mirth because I’ve no love.’

‘Then learn the lesson misery will prove:

your heart is the only mountain to move.’

‘my heart will not move,’ said the rock, ‘for it’s pure stone’

‘No, it will move once you learn how to sit alone.’

‘That’s not how, for I sit alone all day!’

‘I said you wouldn’t love it if I taught the way.

‘Then teach it however the fool would say.’

‘Then that is to sit alone and to pray.’

‘Sit alone and pray? is that such a love to own?’

‘Then I will throw you one final bone:

you will learn to love when your grief you hone.’

‘Ah yes that I can do, I can hone grief,

if not for happiness, that callous thief!’

‘no, let the robber come, for love’s more brief.’

‘More brief?’ said the rock, ‘you lie the way the world lies!

you lie because you want to hog the prize.’

‘Now I see,’ said the earth, ‘you are becoming wise,

if you want to love then teach me to give,

that all the rest of me may also live.’