Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

He fulfills his destiny not at all,

Except as he follows the patient Mystery which has begotten him.

TRUTH: He works as a mole in a dark tunnel, Without eyes to see the light. He grovels before his own tyrants, And applauds his own oppressors. He has suffered them to make a mocking of the infinite

abundance. He has not made the earth, Nor the smallest particle of her ; Yet he denies her to her own children.

POET: To inventory the abundance of Nature is to sparkle water

before the eyes of those dying of thirst. How bitter it is to those who starve To know that the fields are bountiful As the breasts of a young mother ; Wheat-fields, golden, and oat-fields, silvern; Fields of bearded barley, like a phalanx of warriors

moving forward; The tall rye which waves in the summer wind, Billows of plenty ;

Fields of bannered maize, rustling their ribbons ; Plumed as an army of captains, proud in their bravery ; Generous grain-fields of every sort. Which are like stately women, flushed of the sun ; Their hair blown by the wind. Swaying, undulant, bearing golden vessels, Full and overflowing.

TRUTH: Does a mother bear a child And have no milk in her breasts?

93