The Quiet Man: I am become the Madness,
the shatterer of hounds;
I was a man of clay and blood
until the dogs came round.
They came up from the Pit of Dis,
and the slaver hung like thread,
and they fed a year, and they fed ten year,
on the lamp within my head. They ate the lamp, they ate the wick,
they licked the oil like wine,
and in the black where the flame had been
a Thing sat up. 'Twas mine.
It was not I. I gave it my name.
It wore it like the ring
a wolf puts on at the wedding-feast
to toast the murdered king. I have gone down past Cerberus,
past Styx and Lethe's shore,
past the begging, and the raging,
and the terror's bloody door,
to a country under the country of the dead
where the very stones are dumb;
and there I built my house, and there
I wait for what may come. For the pain came to me as a god comes, and no man can bear a god.
For I made a god to bear it, and the god I made is Madness.
For the Madness is as great as the pain, and must be, or I had died.
For I bit through the night like a strap, and the night bled.
For I have counted the hours, and the hours are wolves, and they know my door.
For I prayed, and my prayers came home to me with their eyes put out.
For I have fired a glaze upon the bone, and it is called Sanity, and it is thinner than the skin on milk.
For I fire it every morning in the kiln of my own teeth.
For a thread binds the glaze to the Madness, finer than a drowned man's hair.
For the thread does not mend me. It holds the glaze to the Madness, and the glaze holds the door.
For behind the door is the Madness, and the Madness is I, and I am the door also.
For the red mist behind the door is not anger; anger is a boy's word for it.
For there is a note in the thread at night too high for the ear, and the teeth hear it, and the teeth confess.
For I have eaten the thing the hounds were afraid of, and I am the thing.
For I am not afraid. For fear is a thing the sane keep, like a dog, and I have no dog.
For my calm is not peace. For my calm is the fury gone down so deep it has no need to move.
For I was a gentle man.
For I was a gentle man once, and I remember him, and he does not remember me.
For I made the glaze for her, and for her only, and not for you.
For she sleeps beside me and does not know how thin, and I will not tell her.
For no whole man shall know the cost, and this is my telling, and it is not the whole of it.
For I have taught the storm its manners, and it bows, and it bows, and it bows.
For I am courteous.
For I am very courteous. You fear the mob, the burning street,
the drunkard with his blade,
the man who shouts, the man who shakes;
and well you are afraid.
But anger is a sane man's fire;
it flares, and gutters low.
Fear rather the calm that does not flare,
the calm you cannot know. You think you know what pain is, you,
with your broken bone,
your aching tooth, your one bad night,
and call the knowing done.
The pain that came to sit with me
would stop your heart by noon;
and what I grew to hold it down
would stop the sun and moon. Look not upon the thread, I say,
nor send your clerk to look,
nor look by lamp, nor look by glass,
nor by the Office book;
it is so thin a glance may part it,
a rumour, or a breath;
and the glaze will burst in a thousand shards,
and every shard a death. Look not beneath the glaze, I say;
look not, for if you look
you'll see a red mist boiling there
in a pot that God forsook,
and you'll go mad of the sight of it,
and weep, and never cease,
and you'll beg the hounds of Hades
to come and give you peace. The Madness speaks.