Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely <br /> contemptible, the dangled <br />Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice; <br />But limitary pain -- the rock under the tower <br /> and the hewn coping <br />That takes thunder at the head of the turret- <br />Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish <br /> carving himself <br />With knives will seem to have conquered the world. <br /> <br /> <br />The world's God is treacherous and full of <br /> unreason; a torturer, but also <br />The only foundation and the only fountain. <br />Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes <br /> of hunger; who hides in the grave <br />To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian <br />Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in <br /> love with the God is washed clean <br />Of death desired and of death dreaded. <br /> <br /> <br />He has joy, but Joy is a trick in the air; and <br /> pleasure, but pleasure is contemptible; <br />And peace; and is based on solider than pain. <br />He has broken boundaries a little and that will <br />estrange him; he is monstrous, but not <br />To the measure of the God.... But I having told <br /> you-- <br />However I suppose that few in the world have <br /> energy to hear effectively- <br />Have paid my birth-dues; am quits with the <br /> people. <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Holt<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/birth-dues/
