WHILE people live the life
they are open to the restless skies, and streams
flow in and out
darkly from the fecund cosmos, from the angry red sun,
from
the
moon
up from the
bounding earth, strange pregnant streams, in and
out of the flesh,
and man is an iridescent
fountain, rising up to flower
for a moment godly, like Baal or Krishna, or
Adonis, or Balder,
or Lucifer.
But when people are only self-conscious and
self-willed
they
cannot die, their corpse still runs on,
while nothing comes from the
open heaven, from earth, from
the sun and moon
to them, nothing, nothing;
only the mechanical power of
self-directed energy
drives them on and on, like machines,
on and on, and their triumph in mere
motion
full of
friction, full of grinding, full of danger to the gentle
passengers
of
growing life,
but on
and on, on and on, till the friction wears them out
and the machine begins to
wobble
and with
hideous shrieks of steely rage and frustration
the worn-out machine at last
breaks down:
it is
finished, its race is over.
So self-willed, self-centred, self-conscious people
die
the death of
nothingness, worn-out machines, kaput!
But when living people die in the ripeness of
their time
terrible
and strange the god lies on the bed, -wistful, coldly
wonderful,
beyond
us, now beyond, departing with that purity
that flickered forth in the
best hours of life,
when the man was himself, so a god in his singleness,
and the woman was herself,
never to be duplicated, a goddess there
gleaming her hour in life as
she now gleams in death
and departing inviolate, nothing can lay hand on
her,
she who at her
best hours was herself, warm, flickering, herself,
therefore a
goddess,
and who now
draws slowly away, cold, the wistful goddess receding.