LOVE THE DESTROYER
I reject Love—
Love that has strewn millions of Me along the path I upclomb, shredded my flesh with its claws and burnt out my brains in its long searing clutch.
Through that ageless black night, with my earth-itch fair full upon me, once my Eye was stabbed by a bolt from the fulgurant Light and my soul pined away from its love and grew strong in its terrible Nay.
I reject Love—
Love that accouched every star in the blue, that with knout of Desire sends the young worlds grunting round and round the senescent, suns.
I hear swash and lave of the unimagined fulgurant Light, burning sure and serene at the Axis of things—soft swash and soft lave wrought in the great Mnemonic Cell-Soul of me!
REJECTION
THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNING
New York City, 1902-1906.