Toward the Gulf | Page 8

death, it cannot be?There is a Power with strength to overcome them,?Yet suffers them to be.
And so this man?Went through the years of life, and stripped the fields?Of beauty and of thought with mandibles?Insatiable as the locust's, which devours?A season's care and labor in an hour.?He stripped these fields and ate them, but they made?No meat or fat for him. And so he lived?On his own thought, as starving men may live?On stored up fat. And so in time he starved.?The thought in him no longer fed his life,?And he had withered up the outer world?Of man and nature, stripped it to the bone,?Nothing but skull and cross-bones greeted him?Wherever he turned--the world became a bottle?Filled with a bitter essence he could drink?From long accustomed doses--labeled poison?And marked with skull and cross-bones. Could he laugh?As mother laughed? No more! He tried to find?The mother's laugh and secret for the laugh?Which kept her to the end--but did she laugh??Or if she laughed, was it so hollow, forced?As all his laughter now was. He had proved?Too much for laughter. Nothing but himself?Remained to keep himself, he lived alone?Upon his stored up fat, now daily growing?To dangerous thinness.
So with love of woman.?He had found "thou" the jug of wine as well,?"Thou" "thou" had come and gone too many times.?For what is sex but touch of flesh, the hand?Is flesh and hands may touch, if so, the loins--?Reductio ad absurdum, O you fools,?Who see a wrong in touch of loins, no wrong?In clasp of hands. And so again, again?With his own tools of thought he bruised his hands?Until they grew too callous to perceive?When they were touched.
So by analysis?He turned on everything he once believed.?Let's make an end!
Men thought Excluded Middle?Was born for great things. Why that bulging brow?And analytic keen if not for greatness?
In those old days they thought so when he fought?For lofty things, a youthful radical?Come here to change the world! But now at last?He lectures in back halls to youths who are?What he was in his youth, to acid souls?Who must have bitterness, can take enough?To kill a healthy soul, as fiends for dope?Must have enough to kill a body clean.?And so upon a night Excluded Middle?Is lecturing to prove that life is evil,?Not worth the living--when his auditors?Behold him pale and sway and take his seat,?And later quit the hall, the lecture left?Half finished.
This had happened in a twinkling:?He had made life a punching bag, with fists,?Excluded Middle and Reductio,?Had whacked it back and forth. But just as often?As he had struck it with an argument?That it is not worth living, snap, the bag?Would fly back for another punch. For life?Just like a punching bag will stand your whacks?Of hatred and denial, let you punch?Almost at will. But sometime, like the bag,?The strap gives way, the bag flies up and falls?And lies upon the floor, you've knocked it out.?And this is what Excluded Middle does?This night, the strap breaks with his blows. He proves?His strength, his case and for the first he sees?Life is not worth the living. Life gives up,?Resists no more, flys back no more to him,?But hits the ceiling, snap the strap gives way!?The bag falls to the floor, and lies there still--?Who now shall pick it up, re-fasten it??And so his color fades, it well may be?The crisis of a long neurosis, well?What caused it? But his eyes are wondrous clear?Perceiving life knocked out. His heart is sick,?He takes his seat, admiring friends swarm round him,?Conduct him to a carriage, he goes home?And sitting by the fire (O what is fire??The miracle of fire dawns on his thought,?Fire has been near him all these years unseen,?How wonderful is fire!) which warms and soothes?Neuritic pains, he takes the rubber case?Which locks the images of father, mother.?And as he stares upon the oval brow,?The eyes of blue which flash the light of faith,?Preserved like dendrites in this silver shimmer,?Some spectral speculations fill his brain,?Float like a storm above the sorry wreck?Of all his logic tools, machines; for now?Since pains in back and shoulder like to father's?Fall to him at the age that father had them,?Father has entered him, has settled down?To live with him with those neuritic pangs.?Thus are his speculations. Over all?How comes it that a sudden feel of life,?Its wonder, terror, beauty is like father's??As if the soul of father entered in him?And made the field of consciousness his own,?Emotions, powers of thought his instruments.?That is a horrible atavism, when?You find yourself reverting to a soul?You have not loved, despite yourself becoming?That other soul, and with an out-worn self?Crying for burial on your hands, a life?Not yours till now that waits your new found powers--?Live now or die indeed!
SAMUEL BUTLER ET AL.
Let me consider your emergence?From the milieu of our youth:?We have played all the