Only God could have brought it to its shape.
It feels as if his handgrasp, wearing you
had polished you and hollowed you,
hollowed this groove in your sides, grasped you
under the breasts
and brought you to the very quick of your form,
subtler than an old, soft-worn fiddle-bow.
"When I was a child, I loved my father's riding-
whip
that he used so often.
I loved to handle it, it seemed like a near part of
him.
So I did his pens, and the jasper seal on his desk.
Something seemed to surge through me when I
touched them.
"So it is with you, but here
The joy I feel!
God knows what I feel, but it is joy!
Look, you are clean and fine and singled out!
I admire you so, you are beautiful: this clean
sweep of your sides, this firmness, this hard
mould!
I would die rather than have it injured with one
scar.
I wish I could grip you like the fist of the Lord,
and have you--"
So she said, and I wondered,
feeling trammelled and hurt.
It did not make me free.
Now I say to her: "No tool, no instrument, no
God!
Don't touch me and appreciate me.
It is an infamy.
You would think twice before you touched a
weasel on a fence
as it lifts its straight white throat.
Your hand would not be so flig and easy.
Nor the adder we saw asleep with her head on her
shoulder,
curled up in the sunshine like a princess;
when she lifted her head in delicate, startled
wonder
you did not stretch forward to caress her
though she looked rarely beautiful
and a miracle as she glided delicately away, with
such dignity.
And the young bull in the field, with his wrinkled,
sad face,
you are afraid if he rises to his feet,
though he is all wistful and pathetic, like a mono-
lith, arrested, static.
"Is there nothing in me to make you hesitate?
I tell you there is all these.
And why should you overlook them in me?--"
_NEW HEAVEN AND EARTH_
I
AND so I cross into another world
shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
from this unknown that I would trespass on.
I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.
I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,
just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is
nobody to know.
And whosoever the unknown people of this un-
known world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy
to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I
am making
which they will not understand, because it is
quite, quite foreign to them.
II
I WAS so weary of the world
I was so sick of it
everything was tainted with myself,
skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
work, recreation, governing, anarchy,
it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start
with
because it was all myself.
When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself
plucking my own flowering.
When I went in a train, I knew it was myself
travelling by my own invention.
When I heard the cannon of the war, I listened
with my own ears to my own destruction.
When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own
torn dead body.
It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.
III
I SHALL never forget the maniacal horror of it all
in the end
when everything was me, I knew it all already, I
anticipated it all in my soul
because I was the author and the result
I was the God and the creation at once;
creator, I looked at my creation;
created, I looked at myself, the creator:
it was a maniacal horror in the end.
I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
I was a father and a begetter of children,
and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving
in my own body.
IV
AT last came death, sufficiency of death,
and that at last relieved me, I died.
I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried
myself and was gone.
War came, and every hand raised to murder;
very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
It is good, I can murder and murder, and see
the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
one on another, and then in clusters together
smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul
dead
that are youths and men and me
being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt
thick smoke, that rolls
and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is
dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the
smoke-sodden tomb;
dead and trodden to nought in the sour black
earth
of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden
to nought.
V
GOD, but it is good to have died and been trodden
out
trodden to nought in sour, dead earth
quite to nought
absolutely to nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing.
For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is
everything.
When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out
every vestige gone, then I am here
risen, and setting my foot on another world
risen, accomplishing a resurrection
risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as
before,
new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond
life
proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of
pride
living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor
hinted at
here, in the other world, still terrestrial
myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.
VI
I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death
I put out my hand in the ni
ght, one night, and my
hand
touched that which was verily not me
verily it was not me.
Where I had been was a sudden blaze
a sudden flaring blaze!
So I put my hand out further, a little further
and I felt that which was not I,
it verily was not I
it was the unknown.
Ha, I was a blaze leaping up!
I was a tiger bursting into sunlight.
I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown.
I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb
starved from a life of devouring always myself
now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand
stretching out
and touching the unknown, the real unknown,
the unknown unknown.
My God, but I can only say
I touch, I feel the unknown!
I am the first comer!
Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth-
ing, nothing!
I am the first comer!
I am the discoverer!
I have found the other world!
The unknown, the unknown!
I am thrown upon the shore.
I am covering myself with the sand.
I am filling my mouth with the earth.
I am burrowing my body into the soil.
The unknown, the new world!
VII
IT was the flank of my wife
I touched with my hand, I clutched with my
hand
rising, new-awakened from the tomb!
It was the flank of my wife
whom I married years ago
at whose side I have lain for over a thousand
nights
and all that previous while, she was I, she
was I;
I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was
touched.
Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion
stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a
drowned man's hand on a rock,
I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the
current in death
over to the new world, and was climbing out on
the shore,
risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I,
the old life,
wakened not to the old knowledge
but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a
new world of time.
Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new world
I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of
its discovery.
I shall be mad with delight before I have done,
and whosoever comes after will find me in the
new world
a madman in rapture.
VIII
GREEN streams that flow from the innermost
continent of the new world,
what are they?
dissolved with the mystery of the innermost heart
of the continent
mystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump-
tuous
out of the well-heads of the new world.--
The other, she too has strange green eyes!
White sands and fruits unknown and perfumes
that never
can blow across the dark seas to our usual
world!
And land that beats with a pulse!
And valleys that draw close in love!
And strange ways where I fall into oblivion of
uttermost living!--
Also she who is the other has strange-mounded
breasts and strange sheer slopes, and white
levels.
Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes
possession of me!
The unknown, strong current of life supreme
drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me
down
to the sources of mystery, in the depths,
extinguishes there my risen resurrected life
and kindles it further at the core of utter mystery.
GREATHAM
_ELYSIUM_
I HAVE found a place of loneliness
Lonelier than Lyonesse
Lovelier than Paradise;
Full of sweet stillness
That no noise can transgress
Never a lamp distress.
The full moon sank in state.
I saw her stand and wait
For her watchers to shut the gate.
Then I found myself in a wonderland
All of shadow and of bland
Silence hard to understand.
I waited therefore; then I knew
The presence of the flowers that grew
Noiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.
And flashing kingfishers that flew
In sightless beauty, and the few
Shadows the passing wild-beast threw.
And Eve approaching over the ground
Unheard and subtle, never a sound
To let me know that I was found.
Invisible the hands of Eve
Upon me travelling to reeve
Me from the matrix, to relieve
Me from the rest! Ah terribly
Between the body of life and me
Her hands slid in and set me free.
Ah, with a fearful, strange detection
She found the source of my subjection
To the All, and severed the connection.
Delivered helpless and amazed
From the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazed
For memory to be erased.
Then I shall know the Elysium
That lies outside the monstrous womb
Of time from out of which I come.
_MANIFESTO_
I
A WOMAN has given me strength and affluence.
Admitted!
All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now,
has not so much of strength as the body of one
woman
sweet in ear, nor so much to give
though it feed nations.
Hunger is the very Satan.
The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horrible
God.
It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of
hunger.
Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty
throat.
I have never yet been smitten through the belly,
with the lack of bread,
no, nor even milk and honey.
The fear of the want of these things seems to be
quite left out of me.
For so much, I thank the good generations of man-
kind.
II
AND the sweet, constant, balanced heat
of the suave sensitive body, the hunger for this
has never seized me and terrified me.
Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us,
in these two primary instances.
III
THEN the dumb, aching, bitter, helpless need,
the pining to be initiated,
to have access to the knowledge that the great dead
have opened up for us, to know, to satisfy
the great and dominant hunger of the mind;
man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet,
printed books,
bright, glancing, exquisite corn of many a stubborn
glebe in the upturned darkness;
I thank mankind with passionate heart
that I just escaped the hunger for these,
that they were giv
en when I needed them,
because I am the son of man.
I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothed
my body,
I have been taught the language of understanding,
I have chosen among the bright and marvellous
books,
like any prince, such stores of the world's supply
were open to me, in the wisdom and goodness of
man.
So far, so good.
Wise, good provision that makes the heart swell
IV
BUT then came another hunger
very deep, and ravening;
the very body's body crying out
with a hunger more frightening, more profound
than stomach or throat or even the mind;
redder than death, more clamorous.
The hunger for the woman. Alas,
it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong,
'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord,
not to be spoken aloud.
Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us,
which we must learn to satisfy with pure, real
satisfaction;
or perish, there is no alternative.
I thought it was woman, indiscriminate woman,
mere female adjunct of what I was.
Ah, that was torment hard enough
and a thing to be afraid of,
a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch.
A woman fed that hunger in me at last.
What many women cannot give, one woman can;
so I have known it.
She stood before me like riches that were mine.
Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening,
unfree,
Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious.
A man is so terrified of strong hunger;
and this terror is the root of all cruelty.
She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me.
How could I look, when I was mad? I looked
sideways, furtively,
being mad with voracious desire.
V
THIS comes right at last.
When a man is rich, he loses at last the hunger fear.
I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve.
I could put my face at last between her breasts
and know that they were given for ever
that I should never starve
never perish;
I had eaten of the bread that satisfies
and my body's body was appeased,
there was peace and richness,
fulfilment.
Let them praise desire who will,
but only fulfilment will do,
real fulfilment, nothing short.
It is our ratification
our heaven, as a matter of fact.
Immortality, the heaven, is only a projection of
this strange but actual fulfilment,
here in the flesh.
So, another hunger was supplied,
and for this I have to thank one woman,
not mankind, for mankind would have prevented
me;
but one woman,
and these are my red-letter thanksgivings.
VI
To be, or not to be, is still the question.
This ache for being is the ultimate hunger.
And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh,
very nearly."
Yet something remains.
Something shall not always remain.
For the main already is fulfilment.
What remains in me, is to be known even as I
know.
I know her now: or perhaps, I know my own
limitation against her.
Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink
I have dropped at last headlong into nought,
plunging upon sheer hard extinction;
I have come, as it were, not to know,
died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassed
myself.
What can I say more, except that I know what it is
to surpass myself?
It is a kind of death which is not death.
It is going a little beyond the bounds.
How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on
one's mouth?
I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me,
she is all not-me, ultimately.
It is that that one comes to.
A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that
which is not me in any sense,
it wounds me to death with my own not-being;
definite, inviolable limitation,
and something beyond, quite beyond, if you
understand what that means.
It is the major part of being, this having surpassed
oneself,
this having touched the edge of the beyond, and
perished, yet not perished.
VII
I WANT her though, to take the same from me.
She touches me as if I were herself, her own.
She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that
I am the other,
she thinks we are all of one piece.
It is painfully untrue.
I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and
quick of my darkness
and perish on me, as I have perished on her.
Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have
each our separate being.
And that will be pure existence, real liberty.
Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved,
unextricated one from the other.
It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction
of being, that one is free,
not in mixing, merging, not in similarity.
When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest