Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Гилберт Кит Честертон)
The Modern Manichee
He sayeth there is no sin, and all his sin Swells round him into a world made merciless; The midnight of his universe of shame Is the vast shadow of his shamelessness. He blames all that begat him, gods or brutes, And sires not sons he chides as with a rod. The sins of the children visited on the fathers Through all generations, back to a jealous God. The fields that heal the humble, the happy forests That sing to men confessed and men consoled, To him are jungles only, greedy and groping, Heartlessly new, unvenerably old. Beyond the pride of his own cold compassion Is only cruelty and imputed pain: Matched with that mood, a boy's sport in the forest Makes comrades of the slayer and the slain. The innocent lust of the unfallen creatures Moves him to hidden horror but no mirth; Misplaced morality rots in the roots unconscious, His stifled conscience stinks through the green earth. The green things thrust like horrible huge snails, Horns green and gross, each lifting a leering eye He scarce can call a flower; it lolls obscene, Its organs gaping to the sneering sky. Dark with that dusk the old red god of gardens Still pagan but not merry any more, Stirs up the dull adulteries of the dust, Blind, frustrate, hopeless, hollow at the core; The plants are brutes tied with green rope and roaring Their terrible dark loves from tree to tree: He shrinks as from a shaft, if by him singing, A gilded pimp and pandar, goes the bee. He sayeth, 'I have no sin; I cast the stone', And throws his little pebble at the shrine, Casts sin and stone away against the house Whose health has turned earth's waters into wine. The venom of that repudiated guilt Poisons the sea and every natural flood As once a wavering tyrant washed his hands, And touching, turned the water black with blood.
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