There is no answer. We do here what we will

And there is no answer. This our liberty

No one has known before, nor could have borne,

For it is rooted in this deepening silence

That is our work and has become our kingdom.

If there were an answer, how could we be free?

It was not hard to still the ancestral voices:

A careless thought, less than a thought could do it.

And the old garrulous ghosts died easily,

The friendly and unfriendly, and are not missed

That once were such proud masters. In this air

Our thoughts are deeds; we dare do all we think,

Since there’s no one to check us, here or elsewhere.

All round us stretches nothing; we move through nothing,

Nothing but nothing world without end. We are

Self-guided, self-impelled and self-sustained,

Archer and bow and burning arrow sped

On its wild fight through nothing to tumble down

At last on nothing, our home and cure for all.

Around us is alternate light and darkness.

We live in light and darkness. When night comes

We drop lke stones plumb to its ocean ground,

While dreams stream past us upward to the place

Where light meets darkness, place of images,

Forest of ghosts, thicket of muttering voices.

We never seek that place; we are for the day

And for the night alone, at home in both.

But each has its device, and this is night’s:

To hide in the very heart of night from night,

Black in its blackness.

For these fluttering dreams,

They’d trouble us if we were credulous,

For all the ghosts that frightened frightened men

Long since were bred in that pale territory.

These we can hold in check, but not forget,

Not quite forget, they’re so inconsequent.

Sometimes we’ve heard in sleep tongues talking so:

“I lean my face far out from eternity

For time to work its work on: time, oh time,

What have you done?” These fancies trouble us.

The day itself sometimes works spells upon us

And then the trees look unfamiliar. Yet

It is a lie that they are witnesses,

That the mountains judge us, brooks tell tales about us.

We have thought sometimes the rocks looked strangely us,

Have fancied that the waves were angry with us,

Heard dark runes murmuring in the autumn wind,

Muttermg and murmuring like old toothless women

That prophesied against us in ancient tongues.

These are imaginations. We are free.