Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 31
XXXI.
I descended into the great road that runs round the world. The windows in the houses were shut, and gleaming eyes peered through the closed shutters. The sun weltered upon my head, the paving stones burnt under my feet, the air about me smothered me as in a blanket.
When I got a piece down the street the houses were uninhabited. Above the entrance to each house hung a nightcap and a pair of hobbles. Watchmen stood at the doors. I stopped at the bottom of some steps, greeted the man at the door, and said:—
"I want a house, for the mid-day sun is very hot, and I am a-weary, and all my friends sit by this time in the midst of children and flowers, so why shouldn't I, even I, have a house of my own?"
The man laughed at that with a laugh I did not understand, and answered:—
"You are right, why shouldn't even you have your house? You ought to have this house. But first you must go to the market-place, and take part in the divine service of the people."
I went away to the market-place, where I found a great congregation lying flat on their stomachs under invocation to a mock sun that shone faintly up in the sky. This sight disgusted me, and I turned back. When I got down again into the great street that ran round the world, I saw the man at the door from afar laughing at me with the same laugh that I could not interpret.
"Now you are at liberty to enter the house and possess it as your own. Let me first fasten the hobbles to your feet and put the nightcap on your head."
And as he said it he laughed again, and suddenly I saw right through this obscure speech, and caught sight of the worm that wriggled underneath it. I knew his breed only too well; he belonged to the great race of the malicious who delight in kill-joy.
Then I shook the hobble off my foot and struck the cap out of the man's hand and flung it in his face, and turned aside off the great road that runs about the world and that uncoiled itself before me like a giant white worm sequestered, with the uncleanness of a monster.