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