Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/15



To-day

T is the edge of a somber July night in this Butte-Montana.

The sky is overcast. The nearer mountains are gray-melancholy.

And at this point I meet Me face to face.

I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and dearly and damnably important to Me.

Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with great intentness.

I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus:

I am rare—I am in some ways exquisite.

I am pagan within and without.

I am vain and shallow and false.

I am a specialized being, deeply myself.

I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other pointes.

I am dynamic but devasted, laid waste in spirit.

I'm like a leopard and I'm like a poet and I'm like