Part 13 (1/2)

G.o.d, but it is good to have died and been trodden out trodden to nought in sour, dead earth quite to nought absolutely to nothing nothing nothing nothing.

For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is everything.

When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out every vestige gone, then I am here risen, and setting my foot on another world risen, accomplis.h.i.+ng a resurrection risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as before, new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond life proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of pride living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor hinted at here, in the other world, still terrestrial myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.

VI

I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my hand touched that which was verily not me verily it was not me.

Where I had been was a sudden blaze a sudden flaring blaze!

So I put my hand out further, a little further and I felt that which was not I, it verily was not I it was the unknown.

Ha, I was a blaze leaping up!

I was a tiger bursting into sunlight.

I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown.

I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb starved from a life of devouring always myself now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown.

My G.o.d, but I can only say I touch, I feel the unknown!

I am the first comer!

Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth- ing, nothing!

I am the first comer!

I am the discoverer!

I have found the other world!

The unknown, the unknown!

I am thrown upon the sh.o.r.e.

I am covering myself with the sand.

I am filling my mouth with the earth.

I am burrowing my body into the soil.

The unknown, the new world!

VII

IT was the flank of my wife I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand rising, new-awakened from the tomb!

It was the flank of my wife whom I married years ago at whose side I have lain for over a thousand nights and all that previous while, she was I, she was I; I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched.

Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a drowned man's hand on a rock, I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the current in death over to the new world, and was climbing out on the sh.o.r.e, risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I, the old life, wakened not to the old knowledge but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a new world of time.

Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new world I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of its discovery.

I shall be mad with delight before I have done, and whosoever comes after will find me in the new world a madman in rapture.

VIII

GREEN streams that flow from the innermost continent of the new world, what are they?

Green and illumined and travelling for ever dissolved with the mystery of the innermost heart of the continent mystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump- tuous out of the well-heads of the new world.-- The other, she too has strange green eyes!

White sands and fruits unknown and perfumes that never can blow across the dark seas to our usual world!