The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 53

-What other authority can there be?
-The collective identity and strength is not to be despised. There is a wisdom
in it which can’t be refuted
-I see neither wisdom not strength
-Because you don’t know how to look
-That’s the dogma of a believer
-Whereas you…
-Whereas I am in the becoming of myself and allow myself no other dogma
nor creed
-Yes, your pride is wilful. It will be your undoing
-It is the making
-But look at you – penniless and homeless –is that your vaunted freedom?
-It’s a start
-You have been a long time starting. Everything with you is in the becoming
never in the now of achievement
-Time is my ally
-No, time is the enemy waiting to ambush you
-I am armed
-O you’re not the first to say that nor will you be the last for an egoist can
never understand the lessons of history
-It has few lessons to teach me and those it has I have exhausted
-Then maybe I’m wrong – perhaps you are not wilful and arrogant but that
you possess the terrible purity of an innocence which I do not understand
-In which case…
-In which case I despair of what will become of you.

-shall I tell you
-do, o do