Black Earth

Openly, yes,with the naturalnessof the hippopotamus or the alligatorwhen it climbs out on the bank to experience the

sun, I do thesethings which I do, which pleaseno one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object

in view was arenaissance; shall I saythe contrary? The sediment of the river whichencrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used

to it, it mayremain there; do awaywith it and I am myself done away with, for thepatina of circumstance can but enrich what was

there to beginwith. This elephant skinwhich I inhabit, fibred over like the shell ofthe coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light

can filter—cutinto checkers by rutupon rut of unpreventable experience—it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the

hairy toed. Blackbut beautiful, my backis full of the history of power. Of power? Whatis powerful and what is not? My soul shall never

be cut intoby a wooden spear; through-out childhood to the present time, the unity oflife and death has been expressed by the circumference

described by mytrunk; nevertheless, Iperceive feats of strength to be inexplicable afterall; and I am on my guard; external poise, it

has its centrewell nurtured—we knowwhere—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of

the wind. I seeand I hear, unlike thewandlike body of which one hears so much, which was madeto see and not to see; to hear and not to hear;

that tree trunk withoutroots, accustomed to shoutits own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intactby who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that

spiritualbrother to the coralplant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire lightbecomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to

the I of each,a kind of fretful speechwhich sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that

phenomenonthe above formation,translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first

time, a substanceneedful as an instanceof the indestructibility of matter; ithas looked at the electricity and at the earth-

quake and is stillhere; the name means thick. Willdepth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see nobeautiful element of unreason under it?