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The Conversation

by Edgar Lee Masters

The Human Voice

You knew then, starting let us say with ether,

You would become electrons, out of whirling

Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting

Till through Yourself in other atoms moving

And by the fine affinity of power

Atom with atom massed, You would go on

Over the crest of visible forms transformed,

Would be a molecule, a little system

Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets

With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build

From star-dust, as electron to electron,

The same attraction drawing, molecules

Would wed and pass over the crest again

Of visible forms, lying content as crystals,

Or colloids - ready now to use the gleam

Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match,

As one in darkness lights a candle, and one

Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room

Until the candle's lighted? Even his form

Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands

So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked

Whether You knew the cell born to the glint

Of that same lighted candle would not rest

Even as electrons rest not - but would surge

Over the crest of visible forms, become

Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye

However aided, - as above our heads

Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl

Beyond the telescope, - become bacilli,

Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land

The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey

The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on

Surging above the crest of visible forms until

The ape came - oh what ages they are to us -

But still creation flies on wings of light -

Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields

Neither man nor ape, - we found his jaw, You know,

At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on

Till Babylon was builded, and arose

Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome,

Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin,

New York, Chicago - did You know, I ask,

All this would come of You in ether moving?

A Voice

I knew.

The Human Voice

You knew that man was born to be destroyed,

That as an atom perfect, whole, at ease,

Drawn to some other atom, is broken, changed

And rises o'er the crest of visible things

To something else - that man must pass as well

Through equal transformation. And You knew

The unutterable things of man's life: From the first

You saw his wracked Deucalion-soul that looks

Backward on life that rises, where he rose

Out of the stones. You saw him looking forward

Over the purple mists that hide the gulf.

Ere the green cell rose, even in the green cell

You saw the sequences of thought - You saw

That one would say, "All's matter" and another,

"All's mind," and man's mind which reflects the image,

Could not envision it. That even worship

Of what you are would be confused by cries

From India or Palestine. That love

Which sees itself beginning in the seeds,

Which fly and seek each other, maims

The soul at the last in loss of child or friend

Father or mother. And You knew that sex,

Ranging from plants through beasts and up to us

Had ties of filth - And out of them would rise

Diverse philosophies to tear the world.

You knew, when the green cell arose, that even

The You which formed it moving on would bring

Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves,

The idiot child, the murderer, the insane -

All springing from the action of one law.

You knew the enmity that lies between

The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew

How man would rise to vision of himself:

Immortal only in the race's life.

And past the atom and the first glint of life,

Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed

Amid self-consciousness!

A Voice

I knew.

But this your fault: You see me as apart,

Over, removed, at enmity with You.

You are in Me, and of Me, even at one

With Me. But there's your soul - your soul may be

The germinal cell of vaster evolution.

Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell

Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this:

"After me what, a stalk, a flower, life

That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you

Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed

By the water's edge" - how could the cell foresee

What the reed is, bending beneath the wind

When the lake ripples and the skies are blue

As larkspur? Therefore I, who moved in darkness

Becoming light in suns and light in souls

And mind with thought - for what is thought but light

Sprung from the clash of ether? - I am with you.

And if beyond this stable state that stands

For your life here (as cells are whole and balanced

Till the inner urge bring union, then a breaking

And building up to higher life), there is

No memory of this world nor of your thought,

Nor sense of life on this world lived and borne;

Or whether you remember, know yourself

As one who lived here, suffered here, aspired -

What does it matter? - you cannot be lost,

As I am lost not. Therefore be at peace.

And from the laws whose orbits cross and run

To seeming tangles, find the law through which

Your soul shall be perfected till it draw, -

As the green cell the sunlight draws and turns

Its chemical effulgence into life -

My inner splendor. All the rest is mine

In infinite time. For if I should unroll

The parchment of the future, it were vain -

You could not read it.