There have been so many gods
that now there are none.
When the One God made a monopoly of it
He wore us out, so now we are godless and
unbelieving.
Yet, O my young men, there is a vivifier.
There is that which makes us eager.
While we are eager, we think nothing of it.
Sum, ergo non cogito.
But when our eagerness leaves us, we are godless and full
of
thought.
We have worn out the gods, and they us.
That pale one, filled with renunciation and pain and white
love
has worn us weary of renunciation and love and even pain.
That strong one, ruling the universe with a rod of iron
has sickened us thoroughly with rods of iron and rulers
and
strong men.
The All-wise has tired us of wisdom.
The weeping mother of god, inconsolable over her son
makes us prefer to be womanless, rather than be wept
over.
And that poor makeshift, Aphrodite emerging in a bathing
suit
from our modem seaside foam
has successfully killed all desire in us
whatsoever.
Yet, O my young men, there is a vivifier.
There is a swan-like flame that curls round the centre of
space
and flutters at the core of the atom,
there is a spiral flame-tip that can lick our little atoms into
fusion
so we roar up like bonfires of vitality
and fuse in a broad hard flame of many men in a
oneness.
O — pillars of flame by night, O my young men
spinning and dancing like flamy fire-sprouts in the dark ahead
of
the multitude!
O — ruddy god in our veins, O fiery god in our genitals!
O — rippling hard fire of courage, O fusing of hot trust
when the fire reaches us, O my young men!
And the same flame that fills us with life, it will
dance and bum
the house down
all the fittings and elaborate furnishings
and all the people that go with the fittings and the
furnishings,
the upholstered dead that sit in deep
armchairs.