Seven Songs on Men

Man invented the machine
and now the machine has invented man.
God the Father is a dynamo
and God the Son a talking radio
and God the Holy Ghost is gas that keeps it all going.

And men have perforce to be little dynamos
and little talking radios
and the human spirit is so much gas, to keep it all going.

Man invented the machine
so now the machine has invented man.

What have they done to you, men of the masses
creeping back and forth to work?

What have they done to you, the saviours of the people?
Oh what have they saved you from?

Alas, they have saved you from yourself,
from your own body, saved you from living your own life.

And given you this jig-jig-jig
tick-tick-ticking of machines,
this life which is no-man’s-life.

Oh a no-man’s-life in a no-man’s-land
this is what they’ve given you
in place of your own life.

Ah the people, the people!
surely they are flesh of my flesh!

When, in the streets of the working quarters
they stream past, stream past, going to work;

then, when I see the iron hooked in their faces,
their poor, their fearful faces

then I scream in my soul, for I know I cannot
cut the iron hook out of their faces, that makes them so drawn,
nor cut the invisible wires of steel that pull them

back and forth to work,
back and forth, to work

like fearful and corpse-like fishes hooked and being played
by some malignant fisherman on an unseen, safe shore
where he does not choose to land them yet, hooked fishes of the factory world.

A lizard ran out on a rock and looked up, listening
no doubt to the sounding of the spheres.
And what a dandy fellow! the right toss of a chin for you
and swirl of a tail!

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards
they'd be worth looking at.

People are like leaves, fluttering and gay on the bush of the globe,
or they are like leaves, rustling thick, in crowds on the floor of the earth.
And the thick, fallen crowds crackle and crumble under the milling of the winds,
the winds of change that will not be still,
the breath of life.
But the living leaves in the breath of the wind are more lively,
they glisten and shake.

In all creation, only man cowers and is afraid of life.
Only man is terrified of his own possible splendour and delight.
Only is man agonised in front of the necessity to be something better than he is,
poor mental worm.

Though maybe the mammoth got too big in tusk and teeth,
and the extinct giant elk too big in antlers,
out of fear of the unknown enemy;
so perhaps they too died out from fear,
as man is likely to do.

I like people quite well
at a little distance.
I like to see them passing and passing
and going their own way,
especially if I see their aloneness alive in them.

Yet I don't want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.