30. Earthquakes come, the island sways, a corner crumbles away, another rises out of the sunless waves. 31. The mind is a seafaring laborer whose work is to build a seawall in chaos. 32. From all these generations, from all these joys and sorrows, from this lovemaking, these battles, these ideas, a single voice rings out, pure and serene. Pure and serene because, though it contains dl the sins and disquietudes of struggling man, it yet flies beyond them all and mounts higher still. 33. Amidst all this human material Someone clambers up on his hands and knees, drowned in tears and blood, struggling to save himself. 34. To save himself from whom? From the body which entwines him, from the people who support him, from the flesh, from the heart and the brains of man. 35. "Lord, who are you? You loom before me like a Centaur, his hands stretched toward the sky, his feet transfixed in mud." "I am He who eternally ascends." "Why do you ascend? You strain every muscle, you struggle and fight to emerge from the beast. From the beast, and from man. Do not leave me!" "I fight and ascend that I may not drown. I stretch out my hands, I clutch at every warm body, I raise my head above my brains that I may breathe. I drown everywhere and can nowhere be contained." "Lord, why do you tremble?" "I am afraid! This dark ascent has no ending. My head is a flame that tries eternally to detach itself, but the breath of night blows eternally to put me out. My struggle is endangered every moment. My struggle is endangered in every body. I walk and stumble in the flesh like a traveler overtaken by night, and I call out: Help me.'"
Fourth Step: THE EARTH 1. IT IS NOT you who call. It is not your voice calling from within your ephemeral breast. It is not only the white, yellow, and black generations of man calling in your heart. The entire Earth, with her trees and her waters, with her animals, with her men and her gods, calls from within your breast. 2. Earth rises up in your brains and sees her entire body for the first time. 3. She shudders; she is a beast that eats, begets, moves, remembers. She hungers, she devours her children - plants, animals, men, thoughts - she grinds them in her dark jaws, passes them through her body once more, then casts them again into the soil. 4. She recalls her passions and broods upon them. Her memory unfolds within my heart, it spreads everywhere and conquers time. 5. It is not the heart which leaps and throbs in the blood. It is the entire Earth. She turns her gaze backward and relives her dread ascent through chaos. 6. I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. 7. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil,