WHEN I LOOK INTO THE FACES
When I look into the faces of men and women. When I go to men and women without distrust. When I put men and women before goods. When I even put them before their passions. Even put them before their parts. The whole before its parts. When I do this I find myself somehow at once in touch with men and women. I no longer make too much or too little of their good and bad. I no longer pause with ephemeral details. I no longer miss seeing man in observing men. I no longer go grieved to my work. My feet are lighter. My heart is gay. My brain is cleared from all eclipses. My dreams become possible. My insanest rhapsodies are understood. To go among men and women as one of them instead of above or below them. To know people for comrades. To see no one so mean he could not be a brother. To see no one so great he could withdraw from communion. To fraternize on an equality without question with the crowd. To ask no questions. To go without question. To pass among men and women for one who loves. Throwing off all veils. Going without disguises. Without disguises of virtue as well as disguises of clothes. To meet their suspicion with faith. Not to be turned against men by the injustice of men. Here I stand. No man triumphs in being loved. We only triumph in loving. Nor in being believed in. We only triumph in believing. And if I acquiesce in men and women I will acquiesce in them even in the face of truth. I will say yes when you accuse them but I will continue to love them. I will not deny the facts. But I will live above the facts. I will not say there is no dirt. But I will say there is more than dirt. I do not need figures for my affirmation. I only need men and women. Clean and corrupt men and women. Strong and frail men and women. I know all that is said about the evasions of human nature. And I acknowledge the defaults of human nature. It makes its fathomless descents. But I see no fall from which it cant lift itself victoriously. I am not afraid of the impenetrable nights. For there was daylight before and there will be daylight again and the darkness itself is created by a sunbeam. When I look at a man and a woman I see what is back of them and I see what is ahead. I am not thrown off the scent of glory by the trail of a serpent. I am not worried by the treacheries of the flesh. I do not spend time trying to disprove the shadows. I only insist upon the light. I am always aware of the crowd. I am aware of one only because I am aware of all. I always come back to myself enriched. If I feel out of touch with myself I get in touch with the crowd. That keys me right again. The harmonies are restored. The men and women on the streets. They do not even look at me. Yet I am full of them and they are full of me. They are not aunts and uncles and cousins and fathers and mothers. They are the godstuff out of which the death and resurrection of the stars is effected. They are unmakers and makers. They are the divined and they are diviners. If I know men and women I do not need gods. If I know gods I do need men and women. I say to every man or woman I pass: You are my other self. For I know that nothing could tear us apart. I know that you can no more separate men from each other, or women, or women from men, than you can take an atom off the crust of the earth and toss it into nothingness. And so I love to go among men and women. Love to throw myself upon the convincing mercies of my anonymous pilgrimage. Choosing not to figure up my totals in so many enemies and so many friends but in so many brothers. In the last calculations refusing to calculate. Casting myself into the sea and taking my chances. Into the seething whirling surging reluctant hospitable mass. Preferring sin with all than virtue alone. Not always being pleased but always being loyal. Sure in the end that I could go nowhere ruling others out of heaven. Sure in the end that I am entitled to nothing which the crowd does not confer. So that when I meet you whoever you are I take off my hat to you. Loving you is a way I have of thanking myself that you exist. Trusting you is a way I have of congratulating myself upon your inheritance. For we are joint heirs, all of us, or there is no heir. And we are joint villains or there is no villain. And joint saviors and gods or there are no saviors and gods. All of us. Men and women. All of us. Though we dont see each other, joint for saved or damned anyway. I am closer to everybody than anybody thinks. And everybody is closer to me. And though we may appear to be nonchalant and unconcerned about each other the bond is still unseverable. There is nothing anyone can do to cut him off from me. And nothing I can do to rid the crowd of its responsibility. I look curiously at you as you pass. You are not beautiful or ugly to me. You are not rich or poor or well-dressed or in rags. You are my brothers. When I look into the faces of saints and scoundrels I see only men and women. Always. Always. And when I look into the faces of men and women I see only gods and their companion gods. Always. Always.
When I look into the faces of men and women. When I see what they might do and dont do. When I see their hypocrisies and degeneracies. When I see how far down they go after what is not worth going for at all. When I see that they walk in darkness when they could as easily walk in light. When I see their brutal warfares and their corrupting commerces and their wit-proud arts. Then I wonder. Then my wonder is multiplied by wonder and is dismayed. Then things crowd and choke my spirit. Then I see what the despairers mean when they say man is not worth his flesh. Then I am like someone thrown into a threatening sea. Then I cry for help. The stars pale and disappear. The compass no longer points north. Love becomes only another word for hate. Working seems as useless as loafing. When I see the crowd robbed and awed by the few. When I see the few robbed and awed by the crowd. When I see nothing fitting with nothing the world over. Trade not fitting with justice. Art not fitting with life. No one man fitting with another man. No man fitting with the crowd and the crowd fitting with no man. Your to-day and my to-day not fitting with our yesterdays or our to-morrows. This life not fitting with any life that has been or is to be. Children not fitting with parents and parents not fitting with children. Bodies not fitting with souls and souls not fitting with bodies. What we do not fitting with what we wish to do. Ambition not fitting with performance. Lovers not fitting with loving. Wives not fitting with husbands. Everywhere, everywhere, the inglorious travesty. Our religions not fitting with the gods. Our states not fitting with the people. The mortal moment not fitting with immortal time. Things, souls, tendencies, distraught. When I see that I too withdraw and make less of life. I too retire from my proud boast. I too humble myself before the shaming fact. I too confess my sins. I too charge a big bill up against my ardent faith. I too feel myself enclosed by falsifying conclusions. I too measure myself and weigh myself by what is trivial and puny. I too walk around less sure of myself. Yes, less sure of you. Less sure of all. Less sure of my dreams. Less sure of the very feet I walk on and the very wings by which I soar. Less sure of the picture you paint. Less sure of the song you sing. Less sure of my own passionate words of encouragement and revelation. Less sure. Less sure. Not giving up the great hope. But less sure. Not giving up the food I eat but less sure that it feeds me. Not giving up my certainties but less sure that they are certain. Not breaking finally with you O love but less sure that even you O love are quite so potent as I have thought. Not turning my back on my darling comrades the crowd but not as sure as I have been that my smiling face conveys any message to them. When I see that men cant live with each other without hate. That they cant trade with each other without robbery. That they cant grow big with power without growing little with pride. That they are not satisfied with self rule. That they must rule each other. When I see that men would rather be prosperous and have all poor than be poor and have all prosperous. Then I am lost. Then I am lost. I do not know my way. The sun goes out. My heart goes out. All the beautiful results I was so confident of go out. Love goes out. O, love goes out. Holy final love: it, too, goes out. Goes out like an unreturning tide. I am left alone. Left trying to touch something I can hold on to. Something left of all the wreckage which I can hold on to. Some remnant of joy. Some glint of vision. Some splinter. Some saving strand. Reaching for some hand to lift me above the whirling maddened departing stream. When I see man going back on man. When I see goods and incomes and rulership going back on man it means nothing to me. But when I see man going back on man it means all to me. Then I am prostrate. Then my voice is stopped. I can say nothing. I drift. God knows where to. I drift. It dont seem as if anything was left to do. As if the fight was worth keeping up. As if being loyal was more important than being traitorous. When man goes back on man. I who was so unshakably sure. I who now am shaken. When man goes back on man.
When I look into the faces of men and women. After the eclipses and the disfigurements. After the enmities and the degradations. After going into all the hells. After making all the admissions. After being swept away in the rages of the tyrant passions. Then suddenly the shining sun breaks through. Then suddenly the earth is flooded with light. Then I am restored. I who was cast down am lifted up. I who wondered so much over the weakness of men and women wonder now over the irresistible strength of men and women. Then things are explained. Then evil is explained in the good. Hate is explained in love. That which men and women did not do is explained in what they are capable of doing. Grief is explained in rapture. The greeds are explained in generosity. For I see at last that a man and a woman are not explained in what they do but in what they lead to. What a man and woman do is too often ghastly. But somehow what they lead to is always beautiful. I had looked into the faces of men and women and it was night there. Now the sun is up. Now the faces are radiant. I know that when a man and a woman rob or hate night is there. And I know that when they serve and love the day has come. And I know that a man and a woman containing love and justice will someway through whatever contagions of animosity and crime become loving and just. I go about in this midday of the spirit. In the streets. Everywhere. Where men and women are. And I see men and women as they do not see themselves. I tell them things they do not tell themselves. I lift them up to planes to which they do not lift themselves. For the sun is up in my world. And when the sun is up in the world the world is flushed with insight. When the sun is up in your world you too will know. But until then you will doubt or deny. When the sun is up in the world there is light enough to go round. Light enough to account for all the darkness. Good enough to account for all the evil. Sweet enough to account for all the sour. Life enough to account for all the death. Now the sun is up in my world. And as you pass before me, as I loaf about among you, unrecognized, you men and women, you are as plain to me as my own thumb. I dont need to argue with myself about you. For there’s infinite light in my world. Light to penetrate you through and through. Light to challenge all hideousness and to disperse all contaminations. If I did not think better of you, men and women, than you do of yourselves, I would give you up, O men and women. But my world accounts for you. Accounts for the beast in you by the man in you. Accounts for your moral surrenders by your spiritual victories. If my world did not light you enough to light you to justice and joy then my light might as well be darkness. If it did not light the crowd enough to light it to the man or light the man enough to light him to the crowd it might as well be darkness. If it did not light the effaced scholars enough to light them to life again it might as well be darkness. If it did not throw itself full into your faces, O men and women, and disclose you to yourselves, and disclose love to itself, and disclose the vast peoples to themselves, and disclose all the mistakes to themselves, and disclose all the dividing creeds and industries to themselves: oh! if my light did not disclose everything to itself so that it might light everything farther to its ineffable consequence, then it might as well be darkness. O, it might as well be darkness. But my light is competent. It is enough for everywhere and enough for all. It lights everything to itself. It lights the man to the woman and the woman to the man and the few to many and many to all and all to the one again. My light might as well be darkness if it fails to light everything to itself and all to everything in the storm and calm of its masterful plenty. When I look into the faces of men and women.
Do you know what it means to say love? to be always and only saying love every day every where?
You think it’s easy to say love but hard to say hate: I say no: love is hardest of all to say:
For sometimes you must say love with a knife: sometimes with the cruelest word you know:
Saying love is not saying soft things sweetly to make your lover comfortable: far from that:
Saying love is often to say things that cut and rend: things that may even destroy: do you hear?