PART - IV
THE TEMPTER'S GAME
Before I could run,
I fell
again.
I woke up
to this same—
harsh, cruel,
yet achingly right—
voice.
I look around,
and the same mirror
appears again—
yet it is different.
My red death candle
once again burns
a lively yellow.
The voice summons me
again
into its lifeless laughter,
scheming.
“Oh, sinner,
Have you ever thought
of this cycle—
of achingly right and greedily wrong,
of greed and kindness,
of heart and mind?
Of morals and life,
of life and goodbye knives?
Will you look back
into this hole
within your own self
once my bloody hands
let you go?
Will you forget the care
I kept you in?
Will you forget your sins—
the sinner I once was,
the demon I have become?”
I was about to speak—
of all the things
that had ever occurred to me
about the devil—
I sharply fell
as the floor disappeared
into nonexistence,
and I opened my eyes.
“How long will you sleep?
It’s still daytime.”
My mother called
from another room.
I woke up at my table,
with sketches of devils and virtue
scattered around me,
a book lying wide open beside me—
Demian.
My lamp flickered.
Warm light
came and went
like life itself.
I closed all of it
and walked out of the room,
looking back at it
just once—
just enough,
just a small glance.
And the book mumbled
when all ears were away:
“Humans and their greed—
doomed, so doomed, and so silly.
Mere humans and their small minds,
wishing to be free from me.
Till another sinner wishes to be tempted,
I shall rest
within this boundless little book about me.”
That evil laughter echoed
one last time
as the book read:
“This cycle that I created
for my freedom
shall bind you
till eternity.
I am the devil—
your greed,
your desire itself.
I am a form
so formless
that to find me,
You must become
greed
itself.”
~ H a z e l
