Well Bottom Blues

For a gnostic aquaintence:  Where do we now locate that greater Spirit in this world of brick on brick, rising toward its fall? For me it moves in the woods, manifest, wearing many names.

First Part – XXIV

SHALL we reject our primeval friendship, the age-old,
The great never entreating gods, because the hard-steeled 
Does not know them—that we have strictly schooled; 
Or shall we suddenly seek them on a map's field?

These powerful friends, who take from us the dead, 
Touch against our wheels nowhere; 
Our banquets, our baths, we have far removed,
Long since too slow for us is their messenger

That we always overtake. Lonelier now—lonely, 
Wholly dependent on one another, without one another knowing, 
We no longer lay the paths in the lovely curve that glimmers— 

But straight. Now the former fires still burn in boilers only, 
Heaving the hammers, always bigger growing; 
But we, we diminish in strength, like swimmers.

—Rainer Maria Rilke