Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/73

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POET: Let me know myself.

TRUTH: Stand upon the star Arcturus And know your littleness. The wheeling orb of your imprisoned destiny but a grain

of dust, Twirled between the palms of Eternity ; Yourselves, not greater Than the humblest fly. There is not one of you has made himself. Neither the idolaters, so contemptibly respectable, Nor the thieves, or prostitutes, so contemptuously cast

out. You have falsified the conditions of Nature. You have set yourself against the Creator ; You worship an idol insatiable !

Authority breeding Poverty, and Poverty breeding all

distortion, ugliness, degeneration. Murderers, thieves, prostitutes. All criminals and degraded ones ; There is not one who is not helpless in his destiny. Not sinner but sinned against. Children of inheritance, hatched from the eggs of

Poverty, Far-bred offspring of long Injustice,

Murderers, thieves, prostitutes, drunkards, spewed out by Society — your dam, who strangles her own offspring. You, too, shall be the breeders of Injustice, And shall pay back to your mother the curse she has put

upon you. She has wronged you more than you can wrong her. You are the cancer of her bosom.

POET: I have denied Nature and falsified myself. But now I stand in this Desert and bare my soul,

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