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| HERE I am, an old man in a dry month, |
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| Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. |
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| I was neither at the hot gates |
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| Nor fought in the warm rain |
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| Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass, |
5 |
| Bitten by flies, fought. |
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| My house is a decayed house, |
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| And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner, |
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| Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp, |
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| Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London. |
10 |
| The goat coughs at night in the field overhead; |
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| Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds. |
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| The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea, |
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| Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter. |
|
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| I an old man, |
15 |
| A dull head among windy spaces. |
|
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| Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”: |
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| The word within a word, unable to speak a word, |
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| Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year |
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| Came Christ the tiger |
20 |
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| In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas, |
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| To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk |
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| Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero |
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| With caressing hands, at Limoges |
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| Who walked all night in the next room; |
25 |
| By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians; |
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| By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room |
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| Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp |
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| Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles |
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| Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, |
30 |
| An old man in a draughty house |
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| Under a windy knob. |
|
|
| After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now |
|
| History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors |
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| And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, |
35 |
| Guides us by vanities. Think now |
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| She gives when our attention is distracted |
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| And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions |
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| That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late |
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| What’s not believed in, or if still believed, |
40 |
| In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon |
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| Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with |
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| Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think |
|
| Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices |
|
| Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues |
45 |
| Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. |
|
| These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. |
|
|
| The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last |
|
| We have not reached conclusion, when I |
|
| Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last |
50 |
| I have not made this show purposelessly |
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| And it is not by any concitation |
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| Of the backward devils |
|
| I would meet you upon this honestly. |
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| I that was near your heart was removed therefrom |
55 |
| To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. |
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| I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it |
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| Since what is kept must be adulterated? |
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| I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: |
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| How should I use it for your closer contact? |
60 |
|
| These with a thousand small deliberations |
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| Protract the profit of their chilled delirium, |
|
| Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled, |
|
| With pungent sauces, multiply variety |
|
| In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do, |
65 |
| Suspend its operations, will the weevil |
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| Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled |
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| Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear |
|
| In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits |
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| Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn, |
70 |
| White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims, |
|
| And an old man driven by the Trades |
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| To a a sleepy corner. |
|
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| Tenants of the house, |
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| Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. |
75 |
