Konx_Om

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God face to face, and died. When he spoke he was not understood, for his words were
the words of a dead God.
Basil Gray, his brother, had come hot-foot from West Africa to see him. Basil had
just made the great march from Tetuan to Lagos, and the love of his only brother
burnst strong in him, and the hunger for his face.
Basil, looking upon the blind face of the desert, his body withered in the furnace of the
sand, had seen God face to face, and died.
Basil spoke, therefore, as a dead God speaks, and only children understood him.
At Gibralter, on the way home, he had fallen in with Denzil Roberts, that foolish
globe-trotter, secularist, and philanthropist-at-large. Denzil had just returned from a
silly sentimental journey through Spain, and gazing on the sunset from the western
tower of the Alhambra he had come nigh to seeing God.
Saddened and sane, he yet could recognize the magnificent insanity of Basil, and had
come home with him to learn the way to the gate that men call Madness.
The fourth occupant of the room was Arthur s oldest friend nay, master.
Desperate research, life risked again and again in strange ways, incomprehensible to
the swinish multitude, steady purpose ever equilibrating each thought with its
opposite, had brought him at the end to the mastery of things.
So earnestly would he gaze on God, and die, that God had given him of His own life,
and sent him among men.
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
49
But men knew him not. Only the babes could understand his strange grave smile.
The fifth man was a classical scholar; much learning had made him mad. Yet, well as
he knew Greek and Latin, he had not yet read enough to see therein the luminous
image of the Creator.
Last was a doctor who, gazing ever on madness, had himself become mad. He, too,
saw God, but, being already mad, died not. Men thought they understood him, and for
that reviled him. Being mad, he did not care.
All these men smoked heavily, and the silence of the world lay upon the,
It was only when the Man and the Socialist, invisibly seeking some pinnacle in the
plains of Holbein House, as Sigiri springs from the table of the central province of
Ceylon, came upon them, that their influence woke them into life.
I will cause them to converse, said the Man (who was the Devil), as it were to take you
upon an high mountain and show you all the kingdoms of the earth. I have seen them,
said the Socialist. But, said the Man, things look very different from that height.
Poverty and vice are the same from any point of view, began the Socialist.
Listen! said the other.
Arthur Gray stretched his legs as well as the room would allow. Master, your pipe is
out. Read us that yarn of your turn-to with Asmodee in Scotland. If ever a place
seemed to defy God, it is this, it is this, it is this. Tune our instruments, master!
The big man put away his pipe. Your brother, he said, will recognise the title.
And clearing his throat, he began:
OR THE DEVIL S CONVERSION
I SEE o nights among the whins
The Devil walking widdershins
As stony silent as the Sphinx
I sit upon the sandy links,
And listen to the glittering spell
Of Asmodee the Goat of Hell.
He conjures up the nights of gray
And cardinal in Dahomey,
Where before kings and caboceers
The flaming cat of Hell appears;
Where witches whirl their flapping teats
Still shrieking to the drum that beats
Its monstrous call to flesh of man
Hissing and bubbling in the pan
Hua is God it spelt to me;
There is none other God than He.
KONX OM PAX
50
He conjures up the seas that swell
Before the hosts of Gabriel
Between the Lights in Ibis flight
Who whirls the Sword and Scales of Right.
The tall ship strikes: the rending roar
Of death devours the horrid war
Where men dash women to the deck,
Leave children wailing on the wreck. . . .
Behold the lightning s jagged flash
Spell out the signal with its lash
Hua is God (it tore the sea)
There is none other God than He.
He conjures up the greasy glare
Of Rupert Street by Leicester Square
Whose sodden slaves with sweat and paint
Sicken the soul and make it gaint.
Build of the slimy scales of vice
One concentrated cockatrice!
Think! laughs the devil,, everywhere
Is Rupert Street by Leicester Square.
True! I replied, it spells to me:
There is none other God than He.
He conjures up the loathly rout
Of Christians crawling in and out,
A sight as lovely to the wise
As maggots in a maiden s eyes.
From chapel, church, and meeting-room
From brothel, hospital, and tomb,
From palace, gin-ship, workhouse, prison,
Factory, slum, their slime is risen.
The Devil said Bestir thy wits!
Spew out those dysenteric It s
A pity (thus I cut him short)
Your boyhood was so badly taught.
The riddle s simple here s the key! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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