I  
     AND so I cross into another world
     shyly and in homage¹ linger for an invitation
     from this unknown that I would trespass² on.
 
     I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
     all alone, and very glad, in a new world
     where I am disembarked at last.
 
     I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,
         just ventured in.
     I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is
         nobody to know.
 
     And whosoever the unknown people of this un-
         known world may be
     they will never understand my weeping for joy
         to be adventuring among them
     because it will still be a gesture of the old world I
         am making
     which they will not understand, because it is
         quite, quite foreign to them.
 
                              II
 
     I WAS so weary of the world
     I was so sick of it
     everything was tainted³ with myself,
     skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
     people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
     nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
     work, recreation, governing, anarchy⁴,
     it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start
        with
     because it was all myself.
 
     When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself
        plucking my own flowering.
     When I went in a train, I knew it was myself
        travelling by my own invention.
     When I heard the cannon⁵ of the war, I listened
        with my own ears to my own destruction.
     When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own
        torn dead body.
     It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.
 
                              III
 
     I SHALL never forget the maniacal⁶ horror of it all
        in the end
     when everything was me, I knew it all already, I
        anticipated it all in my soul
     because I was the author and the result
     I was the God and the creation at once;
     creator, I looked at my creation;
     created, I looked at myself, the creator:
     it was a maniacal horror in the end.
 
     I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
     and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
     I was a father and a begetter⁷ of children,
     and oh, oh horror, I was begetting⁸ and conceiving
     in my own body.
 
                              IV
 
     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 oozing⁹ 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 reeking¹⁰ heaps
     till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
     thousands and thousands of gaping¹¹, hideous¹² foul¹³
        dead
     that are youths and men and me
     being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt¹⁴
        thick smoke, that rolls
     and taints¹⁵ and blackens the sky, till at last it is
        dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
     and I am dead, and trodden to nought¹⁶ 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.
 
     ............