Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, formerly used to kill men, but
In the sense of a symbol.
The sword: that is: the storms and counter-storms of general destruction; killing of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice, the innocent
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement, mass-torture, frustration of all
That starred man's forehead.
Tyranny for freedom, horror for happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this thing comes near us again I am finding it
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine.
I know what death is, I have
Longed for it.
But cruelty and slavery and degradation, pestilence, filth, the
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from
For many ages to come.
You are the one that tortures himself to discover himself:
I
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little parables, idyl or tragedy,
Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love.
They are twins, they were born in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark
Of a great war, and they are now of the
That war prefers.
The first-born is like his mother, he is so
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler
Make him seem clothed.
The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements, blindness, mutilation, locked lips of
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.
