To the Multitude Which Is Here

O MULTITUDE!
Here in the hollow of
The theatre, and docile to its walls,
Thou mouldest to its carcase all thy flesh,
And thy black ranks go from me like an ebb.

 

Thou art.
This light that I am in is thine.
Thou hatchest light under too heavy wings,
Loving it, as an eagle loves her eggs.

 

The town is nigh, thou hearest it no longer,
Although it swell the thunder of its streets,
Even though it strike thy walls and bid thee die,
Thou shalt not hear it, thou shalt be, O Multitude!
Full of thy only silence and my voice.

 

Warm art thou as the core of flesh. Thy eyes,
Each of the myriad eyes thou turnest towards me,
I see not if its ball be black or blue;
And yet I feel it touch me, dart its fire
Into my breast, I feel them all at once
Cross like a million swords beneath my skin.
Thou burnest me. Yet kill me thou shalt not.

 

The flame thy bodies can no longer keep
Has rustled along nerves and glances, and
Gathers in me who am become thy crater.

 

Listen! The voice is venturing from my flesh;
It mounts, it trembles, and thou tremblest too.
Test the ascension of my word through thee.

 

It seeks thee, and it finds thee, seizes thee;
It circles suddenly thy souls that yield;
It is in thee invasion, and victory.

 

The words I say to thee thyself must think!
In ranks they penetrate thy bended heads,
And settle brutally, they are the masters;
They jostle, push, and thrust outside the soul
That dwelt there like an ancient dame in tears.

 

All that they pondered on, thy people here,
This sorrow that they drag so many years;
The grief born yesterday which grows; the pain
They speak not of, of which they will not speak
Ever, which makes them eat their tears by night
And even this desire which dries their lips,

 

It must no longer be! I drive out all!

 

O multitude! Thy whole soul stands in me.

 

A force of steel whose two ends I am holding
Pierces thy body through and bends it back.
Thy form is I.
Thy tiers and galleries,
I seize them in my fist and fold them, like
A bundle of lithe reeds upon my knee.

 

Do not resist, thou female multitude,
I is it who desire thee, I will have thee!
Let all my breath creating thee
Pass like the wind of the sea.

 

The violence of my love
Has set thy myriad bones a-shiver;
This brusque embracing scares thee!

 

Something in thee would resist,
Thou female multitude, but nothing dares to!

 

Soon shalt thou die under the weight of thy hours!
Thy men, untied, shall glide out of thy doors,
The nails of the night shall tear thy flesh asunder.
What matters it?
I have thee ere thou diest;
The bodies that are here, the town may take them;
Keeping a cross of ash upon their brow,
The vestige of the god that thou art now.