When I look into the faces of men and women. When I go to men and women
without distrust. When I put men and women before goods. When I even put
them before their passions. Even put them before their parts. The whole
before its parts. When I do this I find myself somehow at once in touch
with men and women. I no longer make too much or too little of their
good and bad. I no longer pause with ephemeral details. I no longer miss
seeing man in observing men. I no longer go grieved to my work. My feet
are lighter. My heart is gay. My brain is cleared from all eclipses. My
dreams become possible. My insanest rhapsodies are understood. To go
among men and women as one of them instead of above or below them. To
know people for comrades. To see no one so mean he could not be a
brother. To see no one so great he could withdraw from communion. To
fraternize on an equality without question with the crowd. To ask no
questions. To go without question. To pass among men and women for one
who loves. Throwing off all veils. Going without disguises. Without
disguises of virtue as well as disguises of clothes. To meet their
suspicion with faith. Not to be turned against men by the injustice of
men. Here I stand. No man triumphs in being loved. We only triumph in
loving. Nor in being believed in. We only triumph in believing. And if I
acquiesce in men and women I will acquiesce in them even in the face of
truth. I will say yes when you accuse them but I will continue to love
them. I will not deny the facts. But I will live above the facts. I will
not say there is no dirt. But I will say there is more than dirt. I do
not need figures for my affirmation. I only need men and women. Clean
and corrupt men and women. Strong and frail men and women. I know all
that is said about the evasions of human nature. And I acknowledge the
defaults of human nature. It makes its fathomless descents. But I see no
fall from which it cant lift itself victoriously. I am not afraid of the
impenetrable nights. For there was daylight before and there will be
daylight again and the darkness itself is created by a sunbeam. When I
look at a man and a woman I see what is back of them and I see what is
ahead. I am not thrown off the scent of glory by the trail of a serpent.
I am not worried by the treacheries of the flesh. I do not spend time
trying to disprove the shadows. I only insist upon the light. I am
always aware of the crowd. I am aware of one only because I am aware of
all. I always come back to myself enriched. If I feel out of touch with
myself I get in touch with the crowd. That keys me right again. The
harmonies are restored. The men and women on the streets. They do not
even look at me. Yet I am full of them and they are full of me. They are
not aunts and uncles and cousins and fathers and mothers. They are the
godstuff out of which the death and resurrection of the stars is
effected. They are unmakers and makers. They are the divined and they
are diviners. If I know men and women I do not need gods. If I know gods
I do need men and women. I say to every man or woman I pass: You are my
other self. For I know that nothing could tear us apart. I know that you
can no more separate men from each other, or women, or women from men,
than you can take an atom off the crust of the earth and toss it into
nothingness. And so I love to go among men and women. Love to throw
myself upon the convincing mercies of my anonymous pilgrimage. Choosing
not to figure up my totals in so many enemies and so many friends but in
so many brothers. In the last calculations refusing to calculate.
Casting myself into the sea and taking my chances. Into the seething
whirling surging reluctant hospitable mass. Preferring sin with all than
virtue alone. Not always being pleased but always being loyal. Sure in
the end that I could go nowhere ruling others out of heaven. Sure in the
end that I am entitled to nothing which the crowd does not confer. So
that when I meet you whoever you are I take off my hat to you. Loving
you is a way I have of thanking myself that you exist. Trusting you is a
way I have of congratulating myself upon your inheritance. For we are
joint heirs, all of us, or there is no heir. And we are joint villains
or there is no villain. And joint saviors and gods or there are no
saviors and gods. All of us. Men and women. All of us. Though we dont
see each other, joint for saved or damned anyway. I am closer to
everybody than anybody thinks. And everybody is closer to me. And though
we may appear to be nonchalant and unconcerned about each other the bond
is still unseverable. There is nothing anyone can do to cut him off from
me. And nothing I can do to rid the crowd of its responsibility. I look
curiously at you as you pass. You are not beautiful or ugly to me. You
are not rich or poor or well-dressed or in rags. You are my brothers.
When I look into the faces of saints and scoundrels I see only men and
women. Always. Always. And when I look into the faces of men and women I
see only gods and their companion gods. Always. Always.
When I look into the faces of men and women. When I see what they might
do and dont do. When I see their hypocrisies and degeneracies. When I
see how far down they go after what is not worth going for at all. When
I see that they walk in darkness when they could as easily walk in
light. When I see their brutal warfares and their corrupting commerces
and their wit-proud arts. Then I wonder. Then my wonder is multiplied by
wonder and is dismayed. Then things crowd and choke my spirit. Then I
see what the despairers mean when they say man is not worth his flesh.
Then I am like someone thrown into a threatening sea. Then I cry for
help. The stars pale and disappear. The compass no longer points north.
Love becomes only another word for hate. Working seems as useless as
loafing. When I see the crowd robbed and awed by the few. When I see the
few robbed and awed by the crowd. When I see nothing fitting with
nothing the world over. Trade not fitting with justice. Art not fitting
with life. No one man fitting with another man. No man fitting with the
crowd and the crowd fitting with no man. Your to-day and my to-day not
fitting with our yesterdays or our to-morrows. This life not fitting
with any life that has been or is to be. Children not fitting with
parents and parents not fitting with children. Bodies not fitting with
souls and souls not fitting with bodies. What we do not fitting with
what we wish to do. Ambition not fitting with performance. Lovers not
fitting with loving. Wives not fitting with husbands. Everywhere,
everywhere, the inglorious travesty. Our religions not fitting with the
gods. Our states not fitting with the people. The mortal moment not
fitting with immortal time. Things, souls, tendencies, distraught. When
I see that I too withdraw and make less of life. I too retire from my
proud boast. I too humble myself before the shaming fact. I too confess
my sins. I too charge a big bill up against my ardent faith. I too feel
myself enclosed by falsifying conclusions. I too measure myself and
weigh myself by what is trivial and puny. I too walk around less sure of
myself. Yes, less sure of you. Less sure of all. Less sure of my dreams.
Less sure of the very feet I walk on and the very wings by which I soar.
Less sure of the picture you paint. Less sure of the song you sing. Less
sure of my own passionate words of encouragement and revelation. Less
sure. Less sure. Not giving up the great hope. But less sure. Not giving
up the food I eat but less sure that it feeds me. Not giving up my
certainties but less sure that they are certain. Not breaking finally
with you O love but less sure that even you O love are quite so potent
as I have thought. Not turning my back on my darling comrades the crowd
but not as sure as I have been that my smiling face conveys any message
to them. When I see that men cant live with each other without hate.
That they cant trade with each other without robbery. That they cant
grow big with power without growing little with pride. That they are not
satisfied with self rule. That they must rule each other. When I see
that men would rather be prosperous and have all poor than be poor and
have all prosperous. Then I am lost. Then I am lost. I do not know my
way. The sun goes out. My heart goes out. All the beautiful results I
was so confident of go out. Love goes out. O, love goes out. Holy final
love: it, too, goes out. Goes out like an unreturning tide. I am left
alone. Left trying to touch something I can hold on to. Something left
of all the wreckage which I can hold on to. Some remnant of joy. Some
glint of vision. Some splinter. Some saving strand. Reaching for some
hand to lift me above the whirling maddened departing stream. When I see
man going back on man. When I see goods and incomes and rulership going
back on man it means nothing to me. But when I see man going back on man
it means all to me. Then I am prostrate. Then my voice is stopped. I can
say nothing. I drift. God knows where to. I drift. It dont seem as if
anything was left to do. As if the fight was worth keeping up. As if
being loyal was more important than being traitorous. When man goes back
on man. I who was so unshakably sure. I who now am shaken. When man goes
back on man.
When I look into the faces of men and women. After the eclipses and the
disfigurements. After the enmities and the degradations. After going
into all the hells. After making all the admissions. After being swept
away in the rages of the tyrant passions. Then suddenly the shining sun
breaks through. Then suddenly the earth is flooded with light. Then I am
restored. I who was cast down am lifted up. I who wondered so much over
the weakness of men and women wonder now over the irresistible strength
of men and women. Then things are explained. Then evil is explained in
the good. Hate is explained in love. That which men and women did not do
is explained in what they are capable of doing. Grief is explained in
rapture. The greeds are explained in generosity. For I see at last that
a man and a woman are not explained in what they do but in what they
lead to. What a man and woman do is too often ghastly. But somehow what
they lead to is always beautiful. I had looked into the faces of men and
women and it was night there. Now the sun is up. Now the faces are
radiant. I know that when a man and a woman rob or hate night is there.
And I know that when they serve and love the day has come. And I know
that a man and a woman containing love and justice will someway through
whatever contagions of animosity and crime become loving and just. I go
about in this midday of the spirit. In the streets. Everywhere. Where
men and women are. And I see men and women as they do not see
themselves. I tell them things they do not tell themselves. I lift them
up to planes to which they do not lift themselves. For the sun is up in
my world. And when the sun is up in the world the world is flushed with
insight. When the sun is up in your world you too will know. But until
then you will doubt or deny. When the sun is up in the world there is
light enough to go round. Light enough to account for all the darkness.
Good enough to account for all the evil. Sweet enough to account for all
the sour. Life enough to account for all the death. Now the sun is up in
my world. And as you pass before me, as I loaf about among you,
unrecognized, you men and women, you are as plain to me as my own thumb.
I dont need to argue with myself about you. For there's infinite light
in my world. Light to penetrate you through and through. Light to
challenge all hideousness and to disperse all contaminations. If I did
not think better of you, men and women, than you do of yourselves, I
would give you up, O men and women. But my world accounts for you.
Accounts for the beast in you by the man in you. Accounts for your moral
surrenders by your spiritual victories. If my world did not light you
enough to light you to justice and joy then my light might as well be
darkness. If it did not light the crowd enough to light it to the man or
light the man enough to light him to the crowd it might as well be
darkness. If it did not light the effaced scholars enough to light them
to life again it might as well be darkness. If it did not throw itself
full into your faces, O men and women, and disclose you to yourselves,
and disclose love to itself, and disclose the vast peoples to
themselves, and disclose all the mistakes to themselves, and disclose
all the dividing creeds and industries to themselves: oh! if my light
did not disclose everything to itself so that it might light everything
farther to its ineffable consequence, then it might as well be darkness.
O, it might as well be darkness. But my light is competent. It is enough
for everywhere and enough for all. It lights everything to itself. It
lights the man to the woman and the woman to the man and the few to many
and many to all and all to the one again. My light might as well be
darkness if it fails to light everything to itself and all to everything
in the storm and calm of its masterful plenty. When I look into the
faces of men and women.
Do you know what it means to say love? to be always and only
saying love every day every where?
You think it's easy to say love but hard to say hate: I say no:
love is hardest of all to say:
For sometimes you must say love with a knife: sometimes with the
cruelest word you know:
Saying love is not saying soft things sweetly to make your lover
comfortable: far from that:
Saying love is often to say things that cut and rend: things that
may even destroy: do you hear?