Explore "Ippolit Konovaloff" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
One night the police broke in the room / Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
And seized our books and arrested us.
But I escaped and came to New York / And thence to Chicago, and then to Spoon River, / Where I could study my Kant in peace / And eke out a living repairing guns!
Look at my moulds! My architectonics!
One for a barrel, one for a hammer, / And others for other parts of a gun!
Well, now suppose no gun-smith living / Had anything else but duplicate moulds / Of these I show you -- well, all guns / Would be just alike, with a hammer to hit / The cap and a barrel to carry the shot, / All acting alike for themselves, and all / Acting against each other alike.
And there would be your world of guns!
Which nothing could ever free from itself / Except a Moulder with different moulds / To mould the metal over.