—Clara, thee I love. My dark white mate! My boy! If I make plans for thee, dearest, if I dream to help thee, I am poisoned.
—What is happening to me? I am no good. I am no better. Is it better not to hate? not to despise, not to plan? Better or worse, I have no choice. If I judge I am poisoned....
—Our world unfolds beyond itself,
It is a yearning, it is a leaping toward God.
—I see Him!
When the trees break out,
When the trees heave up,
—I see Him!
When men dance like little trees full of Springtime,
There you are, God. Here.... I am unafraid.
You cannot kill me, for I am part of your Spring.
* * *
In the warm smoke shadow of the room the chandelier thrust its gas tongues weakly. Beneath it on the table stood bottles of whiskey and gin and syphon water. Night. The backyards swathed silence: the shut of a window, the call of a cat were in the Night like little breaks in a close textured weave.
A slight man with heavy sparse-haired head on thin shoulders, frail chest, spoke in a singing voice. His English was good, the Irish brogue was thick.
“It’s this way—it’s this way. We sit here night after night and we have a good time. What is it we do really? We destroy ourselves, and that means we hurt less. We drug ourselves down to these parts of life which are happy.”
“Man is not happy?”
“Man,” Daniel Scome went on, “is caught between the fulness of the brute and the fulness of manhood. That’s where we are. We’re half way. And we’re weary and comfortless. Where we are we suffer. We cannot rest. We cannot forget. Because we are half way. We must go on, to a new happiness: or we must go back.”