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| 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, | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| 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. | |
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| I an old man, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| |
| 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; | 25 |
| 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, | 30 |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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, | 40 |
| 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 | 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 | |
| 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 | 55 |
| 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? | 60 |
| |
| 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, | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims, | |
| And an old man driven by the Trades | |
| To a a sleepy corner. | |
| |
| Tenants of the house, | |
| Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. | 75 |
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