Yonder lies my way. Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the forks— For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step. The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward—over suns, over flaming chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation; But my thought is firm-set: illusive the flight, the return, the urge, the reaction. I move not. Based in the One, squatted here at the forks where the grooves of Change center, I move not, Adventure not forth, Ran not that race over far-streaming worlds, nor danced on the cosmic pain-griddles. ’Twas my dominoed self, An aspect of me, a shadow that travels forward and backward and upward and downward on Time's dirty screens. What road shall I take when all things return unto me?— I who move not on Time's dirty screens, was not touched by the gad; I who am here at the forks where the grooves of Change center, Who am One and the All, am motion and rest.
Publication History
The Shadow-Eater [1915/17 and 1923]
1923 Edition Text Changes
- [New stanzas at: “Yea, I have taken…”; “I move not…”; and “What road shall I…”]
- foreworlds, to the hilt > foreworlds, ⁋ To the hilt
- pain-griddles > pain-ladders