AT last came death, sufficiency of death,
and that at last relieved me, I died.
I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried
myself and was gone.
War came, and every hand raised to murder;
very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
It is good, I can murder and murder, and see
them fall
the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
one on another, and then in clusters together
smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul
dead
that are youths and men and me
being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt
thick smoke, that rolls
and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is
dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the
smoke-sodden tomb;
dead and trodden to nought in the sour black
earth
of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden
to nought.
V
GOD, 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, accomplishing 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.