Look! We Have Come Through!Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
General
Look! We Have Come Through!
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Poetry
I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.
I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world,
just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is
nobody to know.
And whosoever the unknown people of this un-
known world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy
to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I
am making
which they will not understand, because it is
quite, quite foreign to them.
II
I WAS so weary of the world
I was so sick of it
everything was tainted with myself,
skies, trees, flowers, birds, water,
people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines,
nations, armies, war, peace-talking,
work, recreation, governing, anarchy,
it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start
with
because it was all myself.
When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself
plucking my own flowering.
When I went in a train, I knew it was myself
travelling by my own invention.
When I heard the cannon of the war, I listened
with my own ears to my own destruction.
When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own
torn dead body.
It was all me, I had done it all in my own flesh.
III
I SHALL never forget the maniacal horror of it all
in the end
when everything was me, I knew it all already, I
anticipated it all in my soul
because I was the author and the result
I was the God and the creation at once;
creator, I looked at my creation;
created, I looked at myself, the creator:
it was a maniacal horror in the end.
I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
I was a father and a begetter of children,
and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving
in my own body.
IV
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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