Anthem/Chapter 8

It has been a day of wonder, this,
our first day in the forest.

We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across
our face. We wanted to leap to our feet,
as we have had to leap every morning
of our life, but we remembered suddenly
that no bell had rung and that there was
no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back,
we threw our arms out, and we looked up at the sky.
The leaves had edges of silver that trembled and
rippled like a river of green and fire flowing high above us.

We did not wish to move. We thought
suddenly that we could lie thus as long as
we wished, and we laughed aloud at the
thought. We could also rise, or run, or leap,
or fall down again. We were thinking that
these were thoughts without sense, but before
we knew it our body had risen in one leap.
Our arms stretched out of their own will,
and our body whirled and whirled,
till it raised a wind to rustle through the
leaves of the bushes. Then our hands
seized a branch and swung us high into a
tree, with no aim save the wonder of learning
the strength of our body. The branch
snapped under us and we fell upon the moss
that was soft as a cushion. Then our body,
losing all sense, rolled over and over on the
moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair,
in our face. And we heard suddenly that
we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing
as if there were no power left in us save laughter.

Then we took our glass box, and we
went on into the forest. We went on,
cutting through the branches, and it was
as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves,
with the bushes as waves rising and falling
and rising around us, and flinging their
green sprays high to the treetops.
The trees parted before us, calling us forward.
The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on,
without thought, without care, with nothing
to feel save the song of our body.

We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw
birds in the tree branches, and flying
from under our footsteps. We picked a
stone and we sent it as an arrow at a bird.
It fell before us. We made a fire, we cooked
the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had
ever tasted better to us. And we thought
suddenly that there was a great satisfaction
to be found in the food which we need
and obtain by our own hand. And we wished
to be hungry again and soon, that we might
know again this strange new pride in eating.

Then we walked on. And we came to a
stream which lay as a streak of glass among
the trees. It lay so still that we saw no
water but only a cut in the earth, in which
the trees grew down, upturned, and the
sky lay at the bottom. We knelt by
the stream and we bent down to drink.
And then we stopped. For, upon the blue
of the sky below us, we saw our own face
for the first time.

We sat still and we held our breath.
For our face and our body were beautiful.
Our face was not like the faces of our brothers,
for we felt not pity when looking upon it.
Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers,
for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong.
And we thought that we could trust this being who looked
upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear
with this being.

We walked on till the sun had set.
When the shadows gathered among the trees,
we stopped in a hollow between the roots,
where we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly,
for the first time this day, we remembered
that we are the Damned. We remembered it,
and we laughed.

We are writing this on the paper we had
hidden in our tunic together with the
written pages we had brought for the World
Council of Scholars, but never given to them.
We have much to speak of to ourselves,
and we hope we shall find the words
for it in the days to come. Now, we
cannot speak, for we cannot understand.