Page:The Man Who Died Twice (1924).djvu/36

 A toil of joy for immortality.

Your drums of death, from which it all began,

Would then have been illusions most enduring

When most entirely and divinely dead;

And you, Fernando Nash, would now have been—

But who’s alive to know that you’re alive

To care? Look at that burned out face of yours,

You bloated greasy cinder, and say who.

Say who’s to care, and then say, if you will,

Why anyone in a world where there’s a cockroach,

Should care for you. You insufficient phoenix

That has to bake at last in his own ashes—

You kicked out, half-hatched bird of paradise

That had to die before you broke your shell,—

Who cares what you would be if you had flown?

A bird that men are never to see flying,

Or to hear singing, will not hold them long