Here you will find the Poem Birth-Dues of poet Robinson Jeffers
Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the dangled Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice; But limitary pain -- the rock under the tower and the hewn coping That takes thunder at the head of the turret- Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish carving himself With knives will seem to have conquered the world. The world's God is treacherous and full of unreason; a torturer, but also The only foundation and the only fountain. Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes of hunger; who hides in the grave To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in love with the God is washed clean Of death desired and of death dreaded. He has joy, but Joy is a trick in the air; and pleasure, but pleasure is contemptible; And peace; and is based on solider than pain. He has broken boundaries a little and that will estrange him; he is monstrous, but not To the measure of the God.... But I having told you-- However I suppose that few in the world have energy to hear effectively- Have paid my birth-dues; am quits with the people. Submitted by Holt