fevers and chills,
chapped lips, a slight but debilitating dryness of the
palate while eating
cake, are men’s chief griefs. So it is with all the arts; so even Queen Theology turns a casual amusement for the pornerastic sky- and earth-consumer, a flatulence past the power of all man’s remedies. Such is my
judgment.
I may be in error — a man as remote from the bustlings
of cities
as a stylite praying in his cloud. Refute these doubts
of mine,
prove that the moral and physical advance of the
citified man
outruns the sly proreption of his smoking garbage
dumps,
or the swifter havoc of his armies, and I’ll speedily
recant. Meanwhile,
the past of the world is what it is — read it who likes. As for the present, I can tell you this, by the sure augury of stars. The minarets of Troy will burn — vast city
of tradesmen
buying and selling, extorting and swindling, callipygious
peacocks
whose splay touches even the jade traffic. And out of
its ashes
will come new cities, and new destructions — a pyre
for the maiden
who now rules white-walled, thundering Carthage, and
afterward a city
on seven hills, a seat of empire suckled by she-wolves, mighty as Olympos itself. But that throne too will fall.
And so through the ages, city by city and empire by
empire,
the world will fall, rebuild, and fall, and the mistake
charge on
to the final conflagration. I will tell you the truth:
the mistake
is man. For his heart is restless, and his brain a
crisis brain,
short-sighted, mechanical, dangerous. And the
white-loined city
is man’s great temptress: hungry for comfort at
whatever the cost,
hungry for power, hydroptic-souled, conceiving dire
needs
till the last of conceivable needs is sated, and nothing
remains
but death; and desiring death. There’s pride’s
star-spangled finale!
The fool who says in his heart ‘There is no God’
makes God
in his own image, and God thereafter is Corinth, or
Carthage—
a sprawling bawd and a maniac — a brattle of voices in one sear skull — a tyrant terrified by shadows. If gods exist, they must soon overwhelm that whore — for
their weapons, barns
of famine. They will send sharp teeth of beasts, and the
venom of serpents;
lay bare the beds of seas, and reveal the world’s
foundations.
The earth will wither, polluted beneath its inhabitants’
feet,
and the false god made in the image of man will
lie slaughtered.
“But the man
who submits to the gods and abandons himself, refuses
his nature,
who turns from the city to the rocks and highground—
by mastery of his heart
denies the lust to rule and oppress, the fool’s-gold joy of the sophisticate — to him the gods send honey of
the cliffs
and oil from the flinty crag. Like eagles caring for
their young,
the gods will spread their wings at the rim of the nest
to hold him
and shore him safe in their pinions.
‘This heaven requires me to speak. No one requires you to hear me, or understand.”
With that the tall, black-bearded Northerner ceased and stiffly
sat down,
and he glared all around him like a wolf. He was,
it seemed to me,
eager to be gone, the labor the stars had demanded
of him
finished. The sea-kings glanced at each other and here and there men laughed discreetly, as if at
some joke
wholly unrelated to Paidoboron’s speech. The Argonaut’s
face
was expressionless, Pyripta’s baffled. Old Kreon at last stood up, enfeebled giant. He rubbed his hands together,
hesitant and thoughtful, and pursed his lips. With
a solemn visage
and one eye squeezed tight shut, the king of Corinth
said:
“I’m sure I speak for every man in this room when I say, true and straightforward Paidoboron, that we’re
deeply grateful
for the message you’ve brought us, distressing as it is.
You’ve made explicit, it seems to me, the chief
implication
of Jason’s tragic story: we’re fools to put all our faith in fobs and spangles no firmer than the heart of man—
satisfactions
of animal hungers, or the idealism of the dim-brained
dog.
I have seen myself such mistaken idealism:
the fair white neck of Jokasta broken for a foolish
prejudice,
she who might, through her people’s love, have saved
mad Thebes.
As we talk, with our usual flippancy, of kingdoms
and powers,
you bring us up short; you recall us to deeper purposes.
If our hearts are disturbed — as surely all sensitive
hearts must be
by much you say — we thank you profoundly
nonetheless.”
So saying, he clapped, bowing to Paidoboron, and
quickly, at the signal,
all those sitting at the tables clapped — and even Jason.
How could I blame them? His rant was, after all,
outrageous—
his presumption flatly intolerable. Step warily even with the noblest of prophets — baldhead Elisha
who once
when his dander was up, had the children who chanted
songs in scorn of him
eaten alive by bears. What can you say to the wild-eyed looney proclaiming on Fillmore Street,
THE END OF THE WORLD
IS AT HAND!
REPENT!?
Throughout the hall, the applause swelled,
and Paidoboron sat fuming, scornfully silent.
At length Koprophoros rose. Those nearest me frowned to hush
my mutterings,
and I hushed. The Asian spoke, great rolls of abdomens and chins, his long-tailed turban of gold and
snow-white samite
splendid as the ruby that glowed on his forehead like
an angry eye.
His tone was gentle, conciliatory. He opened his arms and tipped his head like a puppet, profoundly apologetic but forced by simple integrity to air his disagreement He said:
‘Your Majesties; gentlemen:
“Imagine I approach a stranger on the street and say to him, ‘If you please, sir, I desire to perform an experiment with your aid.’ The stranger is obliging, and I lead him away. In a dark place conveniently by, I strike his head with the broad of an axe and cart him home. I place him, buttered and trussed, in an ample oven. The thermostat reads 450°. Thereupon I go off to play at chess* with friends and forget all about the obliging stranger in the stove. When I return, I realize I have overbaked my specimen, and the experiment, alas, is ruined.” He made himself seem a man unspeakably disappointed. Then, eyes wildly gleaming, he dramatically raised an index finger.
“Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done.”
He smiled. His enormous eyes squeezed shut, relishing the juices of his cunning wit. The sea-kings smiled with him. At last, with a gesture:
“Any ethic that does not roundly condemn my action,
I’m sure you’ll agree, is vicious. It is interesting that none is vicious for this reason. It is also interesting that no more convincing refutation of any ethic could be given than one which reveals that the ethic approves my baking the obliging stranger.” He tipped his head, smiled again.