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 shore,
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.