The Vision and the Voice

THE EQUINOX Omir téssili marax, téssala dodi phornépax. amri radara poliax armana pilit. amri radara pilit son’; mari narya barbiton madara anaphax sarpéd6n andala hriliu. Translation. I am the harlot that shaketh Death, This shaking giveth the Peace of Satiate Lust. Immortality jetteth from my skull, And music from my vulva. Immortality jetteth from my vulva also, For my Whoredom is a sweet scent like a seven-stringed instrument, Played unto God the Invisible, the all-ruler, That goeth along giving the shrill scream of orgasm. Every man that hath seen me forgetteth me never, and I appear oftentimes in the coals of the fire, and upon the smooth white skin of woman, and in the constancy of the waterfall, and in the emptiness of deserts and marshes, and upon great cliffs that look seaward; and in many strange places, where men seek me not. And many thousand times he beholdeth me not. And at the lastI smite myself into him as a vision smiteth into a stone, and whom I call must follow. Now I perceive myself standing in a Druid circle, in an immense open plain. A whole series of beautiful visions of deserts and sunsets and islands in the sea, green beyond imagination. ... But there is no subsistence in them. A voice goes on: this is the holiness of fruitless love and aimless toil. For in doing the thing for the thing’s sake is concentration, and this is the holiness of them that suit not 164