The following poem was written under the pseudonym “Monos” for Volume 4 of Julius Evola’s “La Torre” magazine. For those who have been paying close attention, the journey he describes here will be familiar.

I am alone with myself,
and yet the principle that births me
still hides its deepest roots from me.

I live,
and my thirst finds no quenching in the waters—
it rises anew once sated, spent;
like the sun that scorches and seeds the earth,
or fire that turns within its own core.

The world encircling me
resembles a dream unveiling to the slumbering mind
the ever-shifting face of the abyss.

All bonds have frayed and fallen away;
I possess only myself—
and the desires that stir within,
the longings that await fulfillment.
What more could I crave,
if not a self more wholly mine?

I must not place my “I” outside of myself,
nor exile my inner law, my flowering—
no, shatter them in the profound depths,
remake myself as something other than myself,
in order to claim them truly as my own.

Strip sound of its weight,
flame of its glow and burning.
Grasp creatures by the living core of their naked soul—
but be not bound to them.

Rend the timber and its trembling leaves
to vapor, to gusts that whirl
at the blossom’s edge of nothingness.

Draw upward the downward-drifting spirits
toward stark and barren heights;
burn them, purify them to save their virtue,
yet leave them unharmed.

Should the soul spill itself forth upon the world,
it swells at once with ravenous hunger,
ferments like an impure seed,
and breeds its own undoing—death.
From this descent, light and shadow take root;
it seeks itself, growing twisted, malformed limbs.

Yet the flame must consume itself.

What has a name is impure;
what lives is stained with craving,
burned by a thirst that neither lessens nor is sated.

Perdition arrays itself against me;
blind shadow cloaks my heart.
I bear fire along my frame—
I blaze, I ravage the soil—
for this sharp yearning never ebbs.

Thus the flame erupts if it recognizes its food—
but what could the One ever take away from itself?

The imperfect image?
The will to see itself,
to possess itself in the creature?

And here is the heavy earth,
and here the strong and unharmed creature—
and I penetrate it in vain.

The world lies beyond me,
and perhaps no labor of love
is worth the crossing to its shore.

Yet in my heart dwells the secret spring,
and I alone must be transformed if my life is truly to blossom.

For this is death,
and I cannot, I can no longer burn in vain.

It is like a plant fixed beneath the sun,
clutched by the roots of the dark earth,
that stretches its pale leaves,
which is yet forever barred from cresting its final peak.

It is like a flame starved of sustenance,
straining to fracture and fold inward once more.

Where lies the shoot that quickens my own life?

Within me is the day, high and serene;
within me is the night, pure and without echoes;
and my soul releases them as living images
where the thirst seems to fade.

Now let there be peace.

Higher still is silence—
the spring that pours forth without sound.

I wish to withdraw into myself,
into the pure soul,
into the spirit freed from the coarse etchings
that incline it downward.

I must no longer will the world,
but let it fade away, seized thus by its own fate.

Within me lies sorrow’s seed—
I must quench it utterly,
that creatures might be freed:
plucked from their stems like tender leaves,
burned in the perfect light.