The Conversation

The Human Voice

    You knew then, starting let us say with ether,
    You would become electrons, out of whirling
    Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting
    Till through Yourself in other atoms moving
    And by the fine affinity of power
    Atom with atom massed, You would go on
    Over the crest of visible forms transformed,
    Would be a molecule, a little system
    Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets
    With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build
    From star-dust, as electron to electron,
    The same attraction drawing, molecules
    Would wed and pass over the crest again
    Of visible forms, lying content as crystals,
    Or colloids - ready now to use the gleam
    Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match,
    As one in darkness lights a candle, and one
    Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room
    Until the candle's lighted? Even his form
    Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands
    So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked
    Whether You knew the cell born to the glint
    Of that same lighted candle would not rest
    Even as electrons rest not - but would surge
    Over the crest of visible forms, become
    Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye
    However aided, - as above our heads
    Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl
    Beyond the telescope, - become bacilli,
    Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land
    The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey
    The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on
    Surging above the crest of visible forms until
    The ape came - oh what ages they are to us -
    But still creation flies on wings of light -
    Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields
    Neither man nor ape, - we found his jaw, You know,
    At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on
    Till Babylon was builded, and arose
    Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome,
    Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin,
    New York, Chicago - did You know, I ask,
    All this would come of You in ether moving?

A Voice

    I knew.

The Human Voice

    You knew that man was born to be destroyed,
    That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease,
    Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed
    And rises o'er the crest of visible things
    To something else - that man must pass as well
    Through equal transformation. And You knew
    The unutterable things of man's life: From the first
    You saw his wracked Deucalion-soul that looks
    Backward on life that rises, where he rose
    Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward
    Over the purple mists that hide the gulf.
    Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell
    You saw the sequences of thought - You saw
    That one would say, "All's matter" and another,
    "All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image,
    Could not envision it. That even worship
    Of what you are would be confused by cries
    From India or Palestine. That love
    Which sees itself beginning in the seeds,
    Which fly and seek each other, maims
    The soul at the last in loss of child or friend
    Father or mother. And You knew that sex,
    Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us
    Had ties of filth - And out of them would rise
    Diverse philosophies to tear the world.
    You knew, when the green cell arose, that even
    The You which formed it moving on would bring
    Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves,
    The idiot child, the murderer, the insane -
    All springing from the action of one law.
    You knew the enmity that lies between
    The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew
    How man would rise to vision of himself:
    Immortal only in the race's life.
    And past the atom and the first glint of life,
    Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed
    Amid self-consciousness!

A Voice

        I knew.
    But this your fault: You see me as apart,
    Over, removed, at enmity with You.
    You are in Me, and of Me, even at one
    With Me. But there's your soul - your soul may be
    The germinal cell of vaster evolution.
    Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell
    Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this:
    "After me what, a stalk, a flower, life
    That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you
    Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed
    By the water's edge" - how could the cell foresee
    What the reed is, bending beneath the wind
    When the lake ripples and the skies are blue
    As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness
    Becoming light in suns and light in souls
    And mind with thought - for what is thought but light
    Sprung from the clash of ether? - I am with you.
    And if beyond this stable state that stands
    For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced
    Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking
    And building up to higher life), there is
    No memory of this world nor of your thought,
    Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne;
    Or whether you remember, know yourself
    As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired -
    What does it matter? - you cannot be lost,
    As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace.
    And from the laws whose orbits cross and run
    To seeming tangles, find the law through which
    Your soul shall be perfected till it draw, -
    As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns
    Its chemical effulgence into life -
    My inner splendor. All the rest is mine
    In infinite time. For if I should unroll
    The parchment of the future, it were vain -
    You could not read it.