(03/02/1942) Atavism

Atavism
Come, my friend
I grow weary of this ceaseless bickering
Speak not of justice, or that right reward
Well bought with human sweat, and lost.
Blind Libra stands a pawn, her scales
Are pendulums to every vagrant wind of fate
That blows in sloppy gusts about her feet
And she, swaying upon her limber pedestal
Stands drunk and giddy in the gale.
We are young
In this, our span of life, have not begun
That which must find its end
In some far future aeon
And whose beginning was
Before the time of Adam, yet
We have this present life to live
It must be full, in what we do
Completion of each act must be
Fulfillment of our basic will.
In this I charge you strongly
Be true unto thine self in all that is
If aught would find you lacking let it be
Bright steel on which to prove thy worth
And know, that by this test are all things known.
And now
As swinging stars that graze and strain apart
To leave a wrecking torn and hot between
I would there were an end to this as sharp and quick
As knives in the darkness that have made
A decision, the one way or the other.

Grady McMurtry
3/2/1942 e.v.

Originally published in Thelema Lodge Calendar, December 1989