The Deep-Sea Cables by Rudyard Kipling
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar – Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are. There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep, Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world – here on the tie-ribs of earth Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat – Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth – For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time; Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun. Hush! Men talk to-day o'er the waste of the ultimate slime, And a new Word runs between: whispering, “Let us be one!”
Carlos Schwabe 1907 Spleen and Ideal 2, oil on canvas, PC
