MYTHOS

Paused then. He whipped around with his gun levelled.

Sobbing, he saw the circle of his home.

A cloud smudged out the northern continent

So far away hung in the sky. Through dark—­

The obscured stars told of some form that neared—

­A challenge in a known tongue came to him

In that unknown place, as the black gun was flaming.

(This is absurd, of course; all know him mad,

He rots in his cell while Von Hosch of Vienna

And twenty doctors more prick him with pins

To test his reflexes: He is a madman.)

He thought he heard a query why he came

And out of the night a voice that threatened him:

"This is my field you stand on. In the evening

I walk in the cool of my garden here and think

Of the things willed forth and done, or to be done

In the coming epochs."

Conrad says he laughed,

Asking: "What is this garden of which you speak?

Here is no garden but the naked rock.

No trees, you fool, but the hard rock under foot."

And the great voice answered: "That is a lie.

That is a lie. There is a garden here.

I willed it and it was, as once the fight

In a moment's flash I willed, and the solid substance