Classic Poem

Meeting on the way to the same there,
The tired ones talk and make a here,
And further is then where, and where?

The tired ones talk,
Abandoning the written destination
For whatever say-so can be spoken
To end the individual promenade
Sooner than the universal walk.

The tired ones talk, to not walk.
The untired ones talk, to talk and walk,
To live as well as die, lest dying prove
Less lively than to live.

Of such mixed intent
Places in time spring up,
And truth is anybody's argument
Who can use words untruthfully enough
To build eternity inside his own short mouth.

The nicest thought is only gossip
If merchandized into plain language and sold
For so much understanding to the minute.
Gossip's the mortal measure.
Whatever can't be talked
In the closed idiom of yesterday,
That's silence-worth and time-free
As a full purport must to-day be.

Great manyness there is
Before all becomes an all.
Uncertainty and criticism
Oppose to the unified eventual
A world of disagreement
In which every contradictory opinion
Is for to-day an ‘I’ wearing a crown
Of weeds plucked from the tip of the tongue.

Talk is the modesty of the modest.
Talk is the vanity of the vain.
Talk is to be various man.
Talk is to be man apart,
God apart from God the not-God.

Talk is to stop the ears with talk.
Talk is to hear according to the ear.
Talk is the body of the listener
That has its own long talk to walk
Before it comes where the mind rests
To hear without an ear
The unhearable words of no-talk.

And talk in talk like time in time vanishes.
Ringing changes on dumb supposition,
Conversation succeeds conversation,
Until there's nothing left to talk about
Except truth, the perennial monologue,
And no talker to dispute it but itself.

The pleasure of talk is the pleasure of weakness,
As a tree that cannot walk loves not-walking.
The pain of talk is the pain of strength,
As a hand is weary-strong
By the labour that it fails of.

Talk is the whole of truth less talk.
Talk is a war on truth by talk,
And a peace with talk by truth.
In talk truth and talk make peace—
As an enemy forgives an enemy
For being not like to him.

Let there be talk and let there be no talk.
Let the birds with the birds chirp of birds that chirp.
Let the wearers of coats with the wearers of coats
Speak the wisdom of coats, and with the coatmakers.
Let the uses of words prevail over words.
Let there be many ways of not lying
And no ways of truth-telling.
Let there be no wrong because no right.

The world talking round its sun
Leaves emptiness behind
For those to walk who are not,
Who show the space where truth is,
Who are the place with the words identical,
As walking is with talking
When feet and mouths agree
In the still pace of thought.

And more of talk I cannot talk,
Except I talk, speak mingled.
And you would then attend,
Nor complain that I speak solitary.
But complain no more.
Look, I am gone from you,
From your immunity to death and listening.
May you for ever not know nor weather cease
Wherein to die in your own colours,
With other banners flying than the black.
May you not lose the sun too soon—
Blindness and noise by which you stand
Between yourselves and yourselves.
May you not know how never more you were
Than such and such mistalking,
O talking world that says and forgets.