“After Experience Taught Me...”

After experience taught me that all the ordinary Surroundings of social life are futile and vain; I’m going to show you something very Ugly: someday, it might save your life. Seeing that none of the things I feared contain In themselves anything either good or bad What if you get caught without a knife; Nothing—even a loop of piano wire; Excepting only in the effect they had Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire Take the first two fingers of this hand; Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”— Whether there might be something whose discovery Would grant me supreme, unending happiness. And jam them into the eyes of your enemy. You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press No virtue can be thought to have priority Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being. Both fingers down around the cheekbone And setting your foot high into the chest No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed, To live rightly, without simultaneously You must call up every strength you own And you can rip off the whole facial mask. Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask First, in other words, to actually exist. And you, whiner, who wastes your time Dawdling over the remorseless earth, What evil, what unspeakable crime Have you made your life worth?