Birth-Dues

Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely

    contemptible, the dangled

Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;

But limitary pain — the rock under the tower

    and the hewn coping

That takes thunder at the head of the turret-

Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish

    carving himself

With knives will seem to have conquered the world.

The world's God is treacherous and full of

    unreason; a torturer, but also

The only foundation and the only fountain.

Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes

    of hunger; who hides in the grave

To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian

Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in

    love with the God is washed clean

Of death desired and of death dreaded.

He has joy, but Joy is a trick in the air; and

    pleasure, but pleasure is contemptible;

And peace; and is based on solider than pain.

He has broken boundaries a little and that will

estrange him; he is monstrous, but not

To the measure of the God…. But I having told

    you—

However I suppose that few in the world have

    energy to hear effectively-

Have paid my birth-dues; am quits with the

    people.