and obtain by our own hand. And we wished
to be hungry again and soon, that we might
know again this strange new pride in eating.

Then we walked on. And we came to a
stream which lay as a streak of glass among
the trees. It lay so still that we saw no
water but only a cut in the earth, in which
the trees grew down, upturned, and the
sky lay at the bottom. We knelt by
the stream and we bent down to drink.
And then we stopped. For, upon the blue
of the sky below us, we saw our own face
for the first time.

We sat still and we held our breath.
For our face and our body were beautiful.
Our face was not like the faces of our brothers,
for we felt not pity when looking upon it.
Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers,
for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong.
And we thought that we could trust this being who looked
upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear
with this being.

We walked on till the sun had set.
When the shadows gathered among the trees,
we stopped in a hollow between the roots,
where we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly,
for the first time this day, we remembered