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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage

You accuse me then of weakness? Guilty: Lies, sloth and drunkenness. But behind lies I am mining always truth; in the midst of sloth I build stone by stone my church; from drunkenness I wring a terrible sobriety.

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What was I looking for? The power to take or reject. The pot of gold at the rainbow’s end. The marriage of body and soul that makes all pleasure acceptable, all pain surgical.

What did I do? I cast off learning and ambition; fought my way through the swamps of the Nile, the deserts where stones fester, and the arid fogs of Antarctica.

You say: Commonsense. But under your flower garden one finds the snakepit. Once I walked among flowers. Now I lie in the snakepit, venom fuming through my veins – among those others whom you have cast out.

Good or bad you are still children, frightened of the dark. My childishness is my acceptance of your tribunal.

What did I find? Whirlwinds, lost towns and angry houses. Finally the rich odour of childhood, melting ice, companionship of beasts. The Woman who stood in tears at all my crossroads.

What then have I to offer? – The freedom to choose. A new language: not flowers, but wounds. The conversion of your private devil.

Shall I forget these for the old lying convention.

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