This had happened in a twinkling: He had made life a punching bag, with fists, Excluded Middle and Reductio, Had whacked it back and forth. But just as often As he had struck it with an argument That it is not worth living, snap, the bag Would fly back for another punch. For life Just like a punching bag will stand your whacks Of hatred and denial, let you punch Almost at will. But sometime, like the bag, The strap gives way, the bag flies up and falls And lies upon the floor, you've knocked it out. And this is what Excluded Middle does This night, the strap breaks with his blows. He proves His strength, his case and for the first he sees Life is not worth the living. Life gives up, Resists no more, flys back no more to him, But hits the ceiling, snap the strap gives way! The bag falls to the floor, and lies there still-- Who now shall pick it up, re-fasten it? And so his color fades, it well may be The crisis of a long neurosis, well What caused it? But his eyes are wondrous clear Perceiving life knocked out. His heart is sick, He takes his seat, admiring friends swarm round him, Conduct him to a carriage, he goes home And sitting by the fire (O what is fire? The miracle of fire dawns on his thought, Fire has been near him all these years unseen, How wonderful is fire!) which warms and soothes Neuritic pains, he takes the rubber case Which locks the images of father, mother. And as he stares upon the oval brow, The eyes of blue which flash the light of faith, Preserved like dendrites in this silver shimmer, Some spectral speculations fill his brain, Float like a storm above the sorry wreck Of all his logic tools, machines; for now Since pains in back and shoulder like to father's Fall to him at the age that father had them, Father has entered him, has settled down To live with him with those neuritic pangs. Thus are his speculations. Over all How comes it that a sudden feel of life, Its wonder, terror, beauty is like father's? As if the soul of father entered in him And made the field of consciousness his own, Emotions, powers of thought his instruments. That is a horrible atavism, when You find yourself reverting to a soul You have not loved, despite yourself becoming That other soul, and with an out-worn self Crying for burial on your hands, a life Not yours till now that waits your new found powers-- Live now or die indeed! SAMUEL BUTLER ET AL.