Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 11
XI.
I meet them—the eyes—wherever I go or stay, in everything and in everyone.
In the populous town and out in the wide deserts, at the cradle of the new born and the coffin that is lowered into the earth, there where the happy laugh and the miserable weep—I meet them—the eyes—everywhen and everywhere.
In the woman I desired to love and in my best friend, in the executioner and the victim, in the high and the low, under silk hat and moleskin cap—I meet them—the eyes—ever the same.
They surround me day and night; in the morning when I wake they stand around my bed, and at night when I close my eyes they gleam out of the darkness. And they are never just two as in a man's face, but they surge forward in myriads as if from a bottomless casket, as if they belonged to a fantastic giant polypus that grips the whole world in his arms. They follow me like fate, they fasten into my soul as teeth in meat. I am obliged to see them no matter where I turn, I am conscious of them, strive how I may to tear them out, I breathe them in the air, inhale them in the sunshine, I devour them in the words of men and in the thoughts of books. . . .
With an expression half such as one sees in an ill-treated hound, half as in an enemy lying in wait,—as a knife unsheathed under a cloak, sneaking up behind one's back—as thoughts that have never been put into words, as words that have never got beyond a hoarse whisper—anguished and cunning, deceitful, threatening, and filled with hate—they stare into mine the eyes, eyes of the sick, the weak, the crippled; serfs'-eyes catching just a gleam of the azure mantle of the Master on the golden horizons of the future.