Page:Konx Om Pax.pdf/112
I eat her flesh: I drink her blood. God! could I love a woman more
By Arno's flower-enamelled shore, or Father Tiber's tawny flood?
And reeking with her lusty life I hack the gilded mask and burn
With joy and hate. Aha! to turn to my own guts the glutted knife!
O Satan! stand morose and cold above our bodies swimming thus
And plunge thy glory into us, and fan our death with plumes of gold!
Write with our blood before thee spilt on catafalque and catacomb
The dire monition of our doom, the story of the Mask of Gilt!
The paradox is right, by Heaven! exclaimed the big man. That poem is bad enough, but a long explanation—qui s'excuse s'accuse. Better look for God in the filth itself than in the lame excuse for it!
I once knew people as mad as that, said the Doctor. They were right; they knew their own business; but they were misunderstood—and they're in the Asylum at this minute.
Misunderstanding! said the big man; why will people try to judge others? I know less of my own brain—and à fortiori of my brother's—than I do of an oyster. Yet I try to instruct my brother, and let the oyster gang his ain gait.
Read that jest of yours about the Qabalistic Rabbi! said Arthur.
I will. He was the dearest old man in the world; absolutely incapable of doing anything to shock the most puritanical. Yet his curious studies in the Zohar got him a reputation unfit even to speak of.
He was too innocent to guess what trouble he was making! Let it be a warning to us!
So he read:
THE RABBI MISUNDERSTOOD
"Temurah tells us—praise to Adonai!"
Rabbi Mephibosheth Ben Mordecai
Was wont to say, "that the Adepti see