To-day
IT is the edge of a somber July night in this Butte-Montana.
The sky is overcast. The nearer mountains are gray-melancholy.
And at this point I meet Me face to face.
I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and dearly and damnably important to Me.
Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with great intentness.
I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus:
I am rare—I am in some ways exquisite.
I am pagan within and without.
I am vain and shallow and false.
I am a specialized being, deeply myself.
I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other pointes.
I am dynamic but devasted, laid waste in spirit.
I'm like a leopard and I'm like a poet and I'm like