Anthem
We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek
no end. But each day added to the chain of days between us and
the City is like an added blessing.
We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than
we need for our food; we find water and fruit in the forest. At
night, we choose a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around
it. We sleep in the midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not
attack us. We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals,
watching us from the tree branches beyond. The fires smoulder as
a crown of jewels around us, and smoke stands still in the air,
in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep together in the
midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us, their
head upon our breast.
Some day, we shall stop and build a house, when we shall have
gone far enough. But we do not have to hasten. The days before us
are without end, like the forest.
We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it
seems so clear and so simple. When questions come to puzzle us,
we walk faster, then turn and forget all things as we watch the
Golden One following. The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms,
as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the
sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their
shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from
above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which
has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their
neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. They
approach us, and they stop, laughing, knowing what we think, and
they wait obediently, without questions, till it pleases us to
turn and go on.
We go on and we bless the earth under our feet. But questions
come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have
found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for
save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then
what is good and what is evil?
Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which
comes from one is evil. This have we been taught with our first
breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet
now, as we walk through the forest, we are learning to doubt.
There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of all
their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our
brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the
joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which
taught us joy were the power we created in our wires, and the
Golden One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come
from us alone, they bear no relation to all our brothers, and
they do not concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.
There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men.
What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles
within us, struggles to be born. Today, the Golden One stopped
suddenly and said:
“We love you.”
But they frowned and shook their head and looked at us
helplessly.
“No,” they whispered, “that is not what we wished to say.”
They were silent, then they spoke slowly, and their words were
halting, like the words of a child learning to speak for the
first time:
“We are one... alone... and only... and we love you who are
one... alone... and only.”
We looked into each other’s eyes and we knew that the breath of a
miracle had touched us, and fled, and left us groping vainly.
And we felt torn, torn for some word we could not find.
PART TEN
We are sitting at a table and we are writing this upon paper made
thousands of years ago. The light is dim, and we cannot see the
Golden One, only one lock of gold on the pillow of an ancient
bed. This is our home.
We came upon it today, at sunrise. For many days we had been
crossing a chain of mountains. The forest rose among cliffs, and
whenever we walked out upon a barren stretch of rock we saw great
peaks before us in the west, and to the north of us, and to the
south, as far as our eyes could see. The peaks were red and
brown, with the green streaks of forests as veins upon them, with
blue mists as veils over their heads. We had never heard of these
mountains, nor seen them marked on any map. The Uncharted Forest
has protected them from the Cities and from the men of the
Cities.
We climbed paths where the wild goat dared not follow. Stones
rolled from under our feet, and we heard them striking the rocks
below, farther and farther down, and the mountains rang with each
stroke, and long after the strokes had died. But we went on, for
we knew that no men would ever follow our track nor reach us
here.
Then today, at sunrise, we saw a white flame among the trees,
high on a sheer peak before us. We thought that it was a fire and
stopped. But the flame was unmoving, yet blinding as liquid
metal. So we climbed toward it through the rocks. And there,
before us, on a broad summit, with the mountains rising behind
it, stood a house such as we had never seen, and the white fire
came from the sun on the glass of its windows.
The house had two stories and a strange roof flat as a floor.
There was more window than wall upon its walls, and the windows
went on straight around the corners, though how this kept the
house standing we could not guess. The walls were hard and
smooth, of that stone unlike stone which we had seen in our
tunnel.
We both knew it without words: this house was left from the
Unmentionable Times. The trees had protected it from time and
weather, and from men who have less pity than time and weather.
We turned to the Golden One and we asked:
“Are you afraid?”
But they shook their head. So we walked to the door, and we threw
it open, and we stepped together into the house of the
Unmentionable Times.
We shall need the days and the years ahead, to look, to learn,
and to understand the things of this house. Today, we could only
look and try to believe the sight of our eyes. We pulled the
heavy curtains from the windows and we saw that the rooms were
small, and we thought that not more than twelve men could have
lived here. We thought it strange that men had been permitted to
build a house for only twelve.
Never had we seen rooms so full of light. The sunrays danced upon
colors, colors, more colors than we thought possible, we who had
seen no houses save the white ones, the brown ones and the grey.
There were great pieces of glass on the walls, but it was not
glass, for when we looked upon it we saw our own bodies and all
the things behind us, as on the face of a lake. There were
strange things which we had never seen and the use of which we do
not know. And there were globes of glass everywhere, in each
room, the globes with the metal cobwebs inside, such as we had
seen in our tunnel.
We found the sleeping hall and we stood in awe upon its
threshold. For it was a small room and there were only two beds
in it. We found no other beds in the house, and then we knew that
only two had lived here, and this passes understanding. What kind
of world did they have, the men of the Unmentionable Times?
We found garments, and the Golden One gasped at the sight of
them. For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were
of all colors, no two of them alike. Some crumbled to dust as we
touched them. But others were of heavier cloth, and they felt
soft and new in our fingers.
We found a room with walls made of shelves, which held rows of
manuscripts, from the floor to the ceiling. Never had we seen
such a number of them, nor of such strange shape. They were not
soft and rolled, they had hard shells of cloth and leather; and
the letters on their pages were so small and so even that we
wondered at the men who had such handwriting. We glanced through
the pages, and we saw that they were written in our language, but
we found many words which we could not understand. Tomorrow, we
shall begin to read these scripts.
When we had seen all the rooms of the house, we looked at the
Golden One and we both knew the thought in our minds.
“We shall never leave this house,” we said, “nor let it be taken
from us. This is our home and the end of our journey. This is
your house, Golden One, and ours, and it belongs to no other men
whatever as far as the earth may stretch. We shall not share it
with others, as we share not our joy with them, nor our love, nor
our hunger. So be it to the end of our days.”
“Your will be done,” they said.
Then we went out to gather wood for the great hearth of our home.
We brought water from the stream which runs among the trees under
our windows. We killed a mountain goat, and we brought its flesh
to be cooked in a strange copper pot we found in a place of
wonders, which must have been the cooking room of the house.
We did this work alone, for no words of ours could take the
Golden One away from the big glass which is not glass. They stood
before it and they looked and looked upon their own body.
When the sun sank beyond the mountains, the Golden One fell
asleep on the floor, amidst jewels, and bottles of crystal, and
flowers of silk. We lifted the Golden One in our arms and we
carried them to a bed, their head falling softly upon our
shoulder. Then we lit a candle, and we brought paper from the
room of the manuscripts, and we sat by the window, for we knew
that we could not sleep tonight.
And now we look upon the earth and sky. This spread of naked rock
and peaks and moonlight is like a world ready to be born, a world
that waits. It seems to us it asks a sign from us, a spark, a
first commandment. We cannot know what word we are to give, nor
what great deed this earth expects to witness. We know it waits.
It seems to say it has great gifts to lay before us, but it
wishes a greater gift for us. We are to speak. We are to give its
goal, its highest meaning to all this glowing space of rock and
sky.
We look ahead, we beg our heart for guidance in answering this
call no voice has spoken, yet we have heard. We look upon our
hands. We see the dust of centuries, the dust which hid the great
secrets and perhaps great evils. And yet it stirs no fear within
our heart, but only silent reverence and pity.
May knowledge come to us! What is the secret our heart has
understood and yet will not reveal to us, although it seems to
beat as if it were endeavoring to tell it?
PART ELEVEN
I am. I think. I will.
My hands... My spirit... My sky... My forest... This earth of
mine.... What must I say besides? These are the words. This is
the answer.
I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I