rything.
When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out
every vestige gone, then I am here
risen, and setting my foot on another world
risen, accomplishing a resurrection
risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as
before,
new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond
life
proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of
pride
living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor
hinted at
here, in the other world, still terrestrial
myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.

VI

I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death
I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my
hand
touched that which was verily not me
verily it was not me.
Where I had been was a sudden blaze
a sudden flaring blaze!
So I put my hand out further, a little further
and I felt that which was not I,
it verily was not I
it was the unknown.

Ha, I was a blaze leaping up!
I was a tiger bursting into sunlight.
I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown.
I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb
starved from a life of devouring always myself
now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand
stretching out
and touching the unknown, the real unknown,
the unknown unknown.

My God, but I can only say
I touch, I feel the unknown!
I am the first comer!
Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth-
ing, nothing!
I am the first comer!
I am the discoverer!
I have found the other world!

The unknown, the unknown!
I am thrown upon the shore.
I am covering myself with the sand.
I am filling my mouth with the earth.
I am burrowing my body into the soil.
The unknown, the new world!

VII

IT was the flank of my wife
I touched with my hand, I clutched with my
hand
rising, new-awakened from the tomb!
It was the flank of my wife
whom I married years ago
at whose side I have lain for over a thousand
nights
and all that previous while, she was I, she
was I;
I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was
touched.

Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion
stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a
drowned man's hand on a rock,
I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the
current in death
over to the new world, and was climbing out on
the shore,
risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I,
the old life,
wakened not to the old knowledge
but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a
new world o