THE PROTAGONIST

To Carlo de Fornaro.

Medusa! I go toward you smiling, serene; my will is granite to your stare, and I have that within me which blows out the light of hells set there within your eyes and turns to mottled stone the serpents on your head.

I have woven of my pains a masque of bronze and the summits of my deepest hells are changed into the impetuous lightnings of my will and claws of steel have come to grow upon my mutilated members.

I have violated my own graves and set the skeletons of my selves at my meal-less feasting board, and still found tender meat upon their bones, and the marrow of their ancient griefs was as hippocrene to me.

Eternity! Infinity! I come toward thee swifter than a thought of death! I come toward thee bulging like a woman in her ninth month!—bulging with my hells, my devils, my Gethsemanes, booty of my sullen pride!

Benjamin De Casseres {8}

THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNING

New York City, 1902-1906.