Emotions and Feelings

Patience


A wind comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.


Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony.

Piano


Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.


In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.


So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Monologue of a Mother

This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.


Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a loyer,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of departure away from me.


Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually, seeking release
From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing
His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.


I must look away from him, for my faded eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,
Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies
In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,
As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.


This is the last, it will not be any more.
All my life I have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house,
Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:
“Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”


Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.
It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!
Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected
Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,
I must sit awhile and wait, and never know
The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.


Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me:
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.
And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me
With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,
And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher.

Monologue of a Mother

This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross,
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy moss.


Strange he is, my son, whom I have awaited like a loyer,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign country, haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where the wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that hover
Always on the distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of departure away from me.


Like a strange white bird blown out of the frozen seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually, seeking release
From me, from the hand of my love which creeps up, needing
His happiness, whilst he in displeasure retreats.


I must look away from him, for my faded eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my will,
Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a sharp spark flies
In my soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,
As he blenches and turns away, and my heart stands still.


This is the last, it will not be any more.
All my life I have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband’s house,
Never have I said to myself as he closed the door:
“Now I am caught!—You are hopelessly lost, O Self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like a frightened mouse.”


Three times have I offered myself, three times rejected.
It will not be any more. No more, my son, my son!
Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went. I expected
Another would take me,—and now, my son, O my son,
I must sit awhile and wait, and never know
The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot fail.


Death, in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me:
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil.
And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me
With fear, and fills my eyes with the tears of desire,
And my heart rebels with anguish as night draws nigher.

Mating


Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind,
The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,
And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,


The wild anemones lie
In undulating shivers beneath the wind.


Over the blue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,

The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.


In the lustrous gleam of the water, there
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,
Seven toads that meet in the dusk to share

The darkness that interweaves
The sky and earth and water and live things everywhere.


Look now, through the woods where the beech-green spurts
Like a storm of emerald snow, look, see
A great bay stallion dances, skirts
The bushes sumptuously,
Going outward now in the spring to his brief deserts.


Ah love, with your rich, warm face aglow,
What sudden expectation opens you
So wide as you watch the catkins blow
Their dust from the birch on the blue
Lift of the pulsing wind—ah, tell me you know!


Ah, surely! Ah, sure from the golden sun
A quickening, masculine gleam floats in to all
Us creatures, people and flowers undone,
Lying open under his thrall,
As he begets the year in us. What, then, would you shun?


Why, I should think that from the earth there fly
Fine thrills to the neighbour stars, fine yellow beams
Thrown lustily off from our full-blown, high
Bursting globe of dreams,
To quicken the spheres that are virgin still in the sky.


Do you not hear each morsel thrill
With joy at travelling to plant itself within
The expectant one, therein to instil
New rapture, new shape to win,
From the thick of life wake up another will?


Surely, and if that I would spill
The vivid, ah, the fiery surplus of life,
From off my brimming measure, to fill
You, and flush you rife



With increase, do you call it evil, and always evil?

Liaison


A big bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,
Star-spiders spinning their thread


Hang high suspended, withouten respite
Watching us overhead.


Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths
Curtain us in so dark


That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s
Flitting remark.


Here in this swarthy, secret tent,
Where black boughs flap the ground,


You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,
Surgeon me sound.


This rare, rich night! For in here
Under the yew-tree tent


The darkness is loveliest where I could sear
You like frankincense into scent.


Here not even the stars can spy us,
Not even the white moths write


With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us
And set us affright.


Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,
But draw the turgid pain


From my breast to your bosom, eclipse
My soul again.


Waste me not, I beg you, waste
Not the inner night:


Taste, oh taste and let me taste
The core of delight.

Liaison


A big bud of moon hangs out of the twilight,
Star-spiders spinning their thread


Hang high suspended, withouten respite
Watching us overhead.


Come then under the trees, where the leaf-cloths
Curtain us in so dark


That here we’re safe from even the ermin-moth’s
Flitting remark.


Here in this swarthy, secret tent,
Where black boughs flap the ground,


You shall draw the thorn from my discontent,
Surgeon me sound.


This rare, rich night! For in here
Under the yew-tree tent


The darkness is loveliest where I could sear
You like frankincense into scent.


Here not even the stars can spy us,
Not even the white moths write


With their little pale signs on the wall, to try us
And set us affright.


Kiss but then the dust from off my lips,
But draw the turgid pain


From my breast to your bosom, eclipse
My soul again.


Waste me not, I beg you, waste
Not the inner night:


Taste, oh taste and let me taste
The core of delight.

Listening


I listen to the stillness of you,
My dear, among it all;
I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,
And take them in thrall.


My words fly off a forge
The length of a spark;
I see the night-sky easily sip them
Up in the dark.


The lark sings loud and glad,
Yet I am not loth
That silence should take the song and the bird
And lose them both.


A train goes roaring south,
The steam-flag flying;
I see the stealthy shadow of silence
Alongside going.


And off the forge of the world,
Whirling in the draught of life,
Go sparks of myriad people, filling
The night with strife.


Yet they never change the darkness
Or blench it with noise;
Alone on the perfect silence
The stars are buoys.

Intimates


Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.


I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct! -


So I handed her the mirror.
And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own reflection
and that held her spellbound for two seconds
while I fled.

Kangaroo


Delicate mother Kangaroo
Sitting up there rabbit-wise, but huge, plump-weighted,
And lifting her beautiful slender face, oh! so much more
gently and finely lined than a rabbit's, or than a hare's,
Lifting her face to nibble at a round white peppermint drop
which she loves, sensitive mother Kangaroo.


Her sensitive, long, pure-bred face.
Her full antipodal eyes, so dark,
So big and quiet and remote, having watched so many
empty dawns in silent Australia.


Her little loose hands, and drooping Victorian shoulders.
And then her great weight below the waist, her vast pale belly,
With a thin young yellow little paw hanging out, and
straggle of a long thin ear, like ribbon,
Like a funny trimming to the middle of her belly, thin
little dangle of an immature paw, and one thin ear.


Her belly, her big haunches
And, in addition, the great muscular python-stretch of her tail.


There, she shan't have any more peppermint drops.
So she wistfully, sensitively sniffs the air, and then turns,
goes off in slow sad leaps
On the long flat skis of her legs,
Steered and propelled by that steel-strong snake of a tail.


Stops again, half turns, inquisitive to look back.
While something stirs quickly in her belly, and a lean little
face comes out, as from a window,
Peaked and a bit dismayed,
Only to disappear again quickly away from the sight of the
world, to snuggle down in the warmth,
Leaving the trail of a different paw hanging out.


Still she watches with eternal, cocked wistfulness!
How full her eyes are, like the full, fathomless, shining
eyes of an Australian black-boy
Who has been lost so many centuries on the margins of
existence!
She watches with insatiable wistfulness.
Untold centuries of watching for something to come,
For a new signal from life, in that silent lost land of the
South.


Where nothing bites but insects and snakes and the sun,
small life.
Where no bull roared, no cow ever lowed, no stag cried,
no leopard screeched, no lion coughed, no dog barked,
But all was silent save for parrots occasionally, in the
haunted blue bush.



Wistfully watching, with wonderful liquid eyes.
And all her weight, all her blood, dropping sackwise down
towards the earth's centre,
And the live little-one taking in its paw at the door of her
belly.

In a Boat

See the stars, love,
In the water much clearer and brighter
Than those above us, and whiter,
Like nenuphars.


Star-shadows shine, love,
How many stars in your bowl?
How many shadows in your soul,
Only mine, love, mine?


When I move the oars, love,
See how the stars are tossed,
Distorted, the brightest lost.
—So that bright one of yours, love.


The poor waters spill
The stars, waters broken, forsaken.
—The heavens are not shaken, you say, love,
Its stars stand still.


There, did you see
That spark fly up at us; even
Stars are not safe in heaven.
—What of yours, then, love, yours?


What then, love, if soon
Your light be tossed over a wave?
Will you count the darkness a grave,
And swoon, love, swoon?

How Beastly the Bourgeois Is

How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--


Presentable, eminently presentable-shall
I make you a present of him?


Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing


Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.


How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--


Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable-and
like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.


And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.


Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!


Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.

Excursion


I wonder, can the night go by;
Can this shot arrow of travel fly
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky

Of a dawned to-morrow,
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous

Unfruitful sorrow!


What is it then that you can see
That at the window endlessly
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee

And the night look through?
Your presence peering lonelily there
Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear

To share the train with you.


You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;
I wish I could put you away from me;
I suffocate in this intimacy,


For all that I love you;
How I have longed for this night in the train,
Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain

To God to remove you.


But surely my soul’s best dream is still
That one night pouring down shall swill
Us away in an utter sleep, until

We are one, smooth-rounded.
Yet closely bitten in to me
Is this armour of stiff reluctancy

That keeps me impounded.


So, dear love, when another night
Pours on us, lift your fingers white
And strip me naked, touch me light,

Light, light all over.
For I ache most earnestly for your touch,
Yet I cannot move, however much

I would be your lover.


Night after night with a blemish of day
Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;
Come another night, come a new night, say

Will you pluck me apart?
Will you open the amorous, aching bud
Of my body, and loose the burning flood

That would leap to you from my heart?

Excursion


I wonder, can the night go by;
Can this shot arrow of travel fly
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky

Of a dawned to-morrow,
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous

Unfruitful sorrow!


What is it then that you can see
That at the window endlessly
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee

And the night look through?
Your presence peering lonelily there
Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear

To share the train with you.


You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;
I wish I could put you away from me;
I suffocate in this intimacy,


For all that I love you;
How I have longed for this night in the train,
Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain

To God to remove you.


But surely my soul’s best dream is still
That one night pouring down shall swill
Us away in an utter sleep, until

We are one, smooth-rounded.
Yet closely bitten in to me
Is this armour of stiff reluctancy

That keeps me impounded.


So, dear love, when another night
Pours on us, lift your fingers white
And strip me naked, touch me light,

Light, light all over.
For I ache most earnestly for your touch,
Yet I cannot move, however much

I would be your lover.


Night after night with a blemish of day
Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;
Come another night, come a new night, say

Will you pluck me apart?
Will you open the amorous, aching bud
Of my body, and loose the burning flood

That would leap to you from my heart?

Excursion


I wonder, can the night go by;
Can this shot arrow of travel fly
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky

Of a dawned to-morrow,
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous

Unfruitful sorrow!


What is it then that you can see
That at the window endlessly
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee

And the night look through?
Your presence peering lonelily there
Oppresses me so, I can hardly bear

To share the train with you.


You hurt my heart-beats’ privacy;
I wish I could put you away from me;
I suffocate in this intimacy,


For all that I love you;
How I have longed for this night in the train,
Yet now every fibre of me cries in pain

To God to remove you.


But surely my soul’s best dream is still
That one night pouring down shall swill
Us away in an utter sleep, until

We are one, smooth-rounded.
Yet closely bitten in to me
Is this armour of stiff reluctancy

That keeps me impounded.


So, dear love, when another night
Pours on us, lift your fingers white
And strip me naked, touch me light,

Light, light all over.
For I ache most earnestly for your touch,
Yet I cannot move, however much

I would be your lover.


Night after night with a blemish of day
Unblown and unblossomed has withered away;
Come another night, come a new night, say

Will you pluck me apart?
Will you open the amorous, aching bud
Of my body, and loose the burning flood

That would leap to you from my heart?

Elegy


Since I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near,
And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near,
The white moon going among them like a white bird among snow-berries,
And the sound of her gently rustling in heaven like a bird I hear.


And I am willing to come to you now, my dear,
As a pigeon lets itself off from a cathedral dome
To be lost in the haze of the sky, I would like to come,
And be lost out of sight with you, and be gone like foam.


For I am tired, my dear, and if I could lift my feet,
My tenacious feet from off the dome of the earth
To fall like a breath within the breathing wind
Where you are lost, what rest, my love, what rest!

Dreams


All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.


But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

Dreams


All people dream, but not equally.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind,
Wake in the morning to find that it was vanity.


But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people,
For they dream their dreams with open eyes,
And make them come true.

Dreams Old

I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.


The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,
Like savage music striking far off, and there
On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine
Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.


There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range
At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.


Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora,
With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail
Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.


All the bygone, hushèd years
Streaming back where the mist distils
Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears
No longer shake, where the silk sail fills
With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm
Of living has passed, on and on
Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm
Wake of the tumult now spent and gone,
Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after
The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.

Dreams Old

I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.


The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine,
Like savage music striking far off, and there
On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine
Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.


There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range
At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.


Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora,
With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail
Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.


All the bygone, hushèd years
Streaming back where the mist distils
Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears
No longer shake, where the silk sail fills
With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm
Of living has passed, on and on
Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm
Wake of the tumult now spent and gone,
Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after
The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.

Discipline


It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;
The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains
The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.


It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long:
I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul
And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong
Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil’s little control.


And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight
Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there
In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light,
We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare.


And in the original dark the roots cannot keep, cannot know
Any communion whatever, but they bind themselves on to the dark,
And drawing the darkness together, crush from it a twilight, a slow
Burning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower’s bright spark.


I came to the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me;
I came with gentleness, with my heart ’twixt my hands like a bowl,
Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly
And tried to break the vessel, and to violate my soul.


But what have I to do with the boys, deep down in my soul, my love?
I throw from out of the darkness my self like a flower into sight,
Like a flower from out of the night-time, I lift my face, and those
Who will may warm their hands at me, comfort this night.


But whosoever would pluck apart my flowering shall burn their hands,
So flowers are tender folk, and roots can only hide,
Yet my flowerings of love are a fire, and the scarlet brands
Of my love are roses to look at, but flames to chide.


But comfort me, my love, now the fires are low,
Now I am broken to earth like a winter destroyed, and all
Myself but a knowledge of roots, of roots in the dark that throw
A net on the undersoil, which lies passive beneath their thrall.


But comfort me, for henceforth my love is yours alone,
To you alone will I offer the bowl, to you will I give
My essence only, but love me, and I will atone
To you for my general loving, atone as long as I live.

Discipline


It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane,
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves;
The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains
The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves.


It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long:
I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul
And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong
Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the deep soil’s little control.


And there is the dark, my darling, where the roots are entangled and fight
Each one for its hold on the oblivious darkness, I know that there
In the night where we first have being, before we rise on the light,
We are not brothers, my darling, we fight and we do not spare.


And in the original dark the roots cannot keep, cannot know
Any communion whatever, but they bind themselves on to the dark,
And drawing the darkness together, crush from it a twilight, a slow
Burning that breaks at last into leaves and a flower’s bright spark.


I came to the boys with love, my dear, but they turned on me;
I came with gentleness, with my heart ’twixt my hands like a bowl,
Like a loving-cup, like a grail, but they spilt it triumphantly
And tried to break the vessel, and to violate my soul.


But what have I to do with the boys, deep down in my soul, my love?
I throw from out of the darkness my self like a flower into sight,
Like a flower from out of the night-time, I lift my face, and those
Who will may warm their hands at me, comfort this night.


But whosoever would pluck apart my flowering shall burn their hands,
So flowers are tender folk, and roots can only hide,
Yet my flowerings of love are a fire, and the scarlet brands
Of my love are roses to look at, but flames to chide.


But comfort me, my love, now the fires are low,
Now I am broken to earth like a winter destroyed, and all
Myself but a knowledge of roots, of roots in the dark that throw
A net on the undersoil, which lies passive beneath their thrall.


But comfort me, for henceforth my love is yours alone,
To you alone will I offer the bowl, to you will I give
My essence only, but love me, and I will atone
To you for my general loving, atone as long as I live.

Dissolute


Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.


And through these years, while I burn on the fuel of life,
What matter the stuff I lick up in my living flame,
Seeing I keep in the fire-core, inviolate,
A night where she dreams my dreams for me, ever the same.

Conceit


It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.


Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the
Laocoön coils of our conceit.


Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.


Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.