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Page 18
Yes, of course. They don't ask the question because the big thing they are
doing seems to be the answer beforehand. But it isn't! Not compared with
the Old Testament. So we have to ask it for ourselves. And that's why I
came here....
THE MAN
Oh. You want to know where _they_ are, with their power, or where _you_
will be without it?
THE BOY
Where I'll be. I hate it! But what else is there to-day?
THE MAN
Why, there's you.
THE BOY
But that's just it! What am I for if I can't join in? I came to you....
You don't mind my talking, do you?
THE MAN
On the contrary.
THE BOY
Well, everybody I know is a part of it, so how could they tell me what to
do outside of it? I've been wondering about that for a year. Before then,
when I was just a boy, the world seemed full of everything, but now it
seems to have only one thing. That or nothing. Then one day I saw a
photograph somebody had cut out of a Sunday paper, and I thought to myself
there's a man who seems outside, entirely outside, and yet he has
something. It wasn't all or nothing for him ... and I wondered who it was.
Then I found your book, with the same picture in it. You bet I read it
right off! It was the first time in my life I had ever felt power as great
as skyscrapers and railroads and yet apart from them. Outside of all they
mean. Like the Old Testament. Those poems!
THE MAN
You liked them?
THE BOY
It was more than that. How can a fellow _like_ the ocean, or a snow storm?
THE MAN
Is that what you thought they were like?
THE BOY
Why, they went off like a fourteen inch gun! Not a whine about life in
them--not a single regret for anything. They were wonderful! They seemed
to pick up mountains and cities and toss them all about like toys. They
made me feel that what I was looking for was able to conquer what I
didn't like.... I said to myself I don't care if he does laugh at me, I'll
go and ask him where all that power is! And so I came....
THE MAN
There's Rex now--over across the road. He's wondering who you are. He sees
we are friends, and he's pretending to be jealous. Dogs are funny, aren't
they? But you were speaking about my poems. It's odd that their first
criticism should come from you like this. You must be about the same age I
was when I began writing--when I wanted above anything to write a book
like that, and when such a book seemed the most impossible thing I could
do. Like trying to swim the Atlantic, or live forever.
THE BOY
It seemed impossible? I should think it would be the most natural thing in
the world, for _you_--like eating dinner.
THE MAN
That's the wonderful thing--not the book, but that _I_ should have come to
write it!
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