The Circle-That-Looks-Like-a-Line

I am the Watcher, and me nothing eludes.
I live behind the mask of things,
My breath is world-wither, and a chance shot from my eye-sockets confounds the God of Illusions at Its imbecile pastimes.
I stand within Time’s crumbling walls and weave at Eternity’s looms the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line.
I am leagued with the Sphinx, and her secretive mumblings I alone understand.
I am the footnote that explains that old undecipherable palimpsest called Life,
And it is for me the drum beats—the deadly intoning drumbeats that the mummer Man jigs to.

Briskly Man in his morn steps forth, guards up.
He bows, he smiles, and his eyes, foci of his myriad lusts seek in the dust for the thing that slipped, eel-like through his fingers in the yesterday.
At night, within his locked and barred room, his hope-fattened face dismantles.
His eyes grow knotted troubled lights, jaws sag—weary, oh, weary is he!
Pain! Pain! gay-pain! I watch, I record, in the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line!

Youth! Youth! how gay his step!
His soul scents Truth—he is off like a hound on the trail, white brow upturned, the old ecstatic urge in his eye:
His hands would hook her now!
Up! Up! he reaches and steps off the precipice of the world.
A Hag bends over him, a Hag whose face is a lutescent leer, eyes steel-grayed by a knowledge of the pitiless truths.
Eternity rings with her glee-shrieks as she gathers his bones—bones that shall feed her quenchless immemorial fires in the nether hollows—
Hollows of the mocking shapes,
Hollows of metallic laughs,
Hollows of the wan gray spectres.
Pain! Pain! gay-pain! I watch, I record, in the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line!

Yea, I am the lidless, dispassionate Eye that pierces the murk and the mist—
My tears are a laughing,
My laughing a weeping—
I watch and I wait and record,
Brooding over my soul, that dried lava-stream and granary of volcanic dust;
Brooding over my brain, that mirror of the implacable trivial.

I am a shadow that is more real than a substance,
Am skewered and pinioned to offal—yet my soul is a Kremlin of unapprehended magnificence,
The Vision Malefic and the Vision Beatific, too.
I live and am not, am the Infinite withered to naught

I watch, I record and I weave at Eternity’s looms the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line.

Publication History

• The Shadow-Eater [1915/17 and 1923]
• Wilmington Evening News Journal, Dec. 31, 1915, p. 4.
  • Excerpt: Stanzas 1, 2, 4 and 6, with dotted lines before stanzas 4 and 6
  • Tag: —From “The Shadow-Eater,” by Benjamin De Casseres.
  • Text changes:
    • weary, oh, weary > weary, or, weary
    • [final period omitted]

1923 Edition Text Changes

• [each instance of “the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line!” is set on a new line with: the > The]
• world-wither, and > world-wither, ⁋ And
• myriad lusts, seek > myriad lusts, ⁋ Seek
• lutescent leer, eyes > lutescent leer, ⁋ Eyes
• bones—bones > bones— ⁋ Bones
• wan gray > wan-gray
• a Kremlin > a ⁋ Kremlin
• am not, am > am not, I am