As I passed through my incarnations, in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations

to the gods of the marketplace, peering through reverent fingers, I watch them flourish and

fall, and the gods of the copybook headings I notice outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us, they showed us each in turn that water would

certainly wet us as fire would certainly burn, but we found them lacking in uplift, vision

and breadth of mind, so we left them to teach the gorillas while we followed the march

of mankind.

We moved as the spirit listed, they never altered their pace, being neither cloud nor windborne

like the gods of the marketplace.

But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come, that a tribe

had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the hopes that our world is built on, they were utterly out of touch, they denied

that the moon was stillton, they denied she was even dutch, they denied that wishes

were horses, they denied that a pig had wings, so we worshipped the gods of the market,

who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, they promised perpetual peace, they swore

if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed, they sold us, and delivered us bound to our foe, and the gods of the

copybook headings said, stick to the devil you know.

On the first Feminine Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life, which started by loving

our neighbor, and ended by loving his wife.

Till our women had no more children, and the men lost reason and faith, and the gods

...