During one winter every afternoonI’d sink into that momentary swoon.And then it ceased. Its memory grew dim.160 My health improved. I even learned to swim.But like some little lad forced by a wenchWith his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,I was corrupted, terrified, allured,And though old Doctor Colt pronounced me curedOf what, he said, were mainly growing pains,The wonder lingers and the shame remains.
Canto two
There was a time in my demented youthWhen somehow I suspected that the truthAbout survival after death was known170 To every human being: I aloneKnew nothing, and a great conspiracyOf books and people hid the truth from me.There was the day when I began to doubtMan’s sanity: How could he live withoutKnowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doomAwaited consciousness beyond the tomb?
And finally there was the sleepless nightWhen I decided to explore and fightThe foul, the inadmissible abyss,180 Devoting all my twisted life to thisOne task. Today I’m sixty-one. WaxwingsAre berry-pecking. A cicada sings.
The little scissors I am holding areA dazzling synthesis of sun and star.I stand before the window and I pareMy fingernails and vaguely am awareOf certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,Our grocer’s son; the index, lean and glumCollege astronomer Starover Blue;190 The middle fellow, a tall priest I knew;The feminine fourth finger, an old flirt;And little pinky clinging to her skirt.And I make mouths as I snip off the thinStrips of what Aunt Maud used to call “scarf-skin.”
Maud Shade was eighty when a sudden hushFell on her life. We saw the angry flushAnd torsion of paralysis assailHer noble cheek. We moved her to Pinedale,Famed for its sanitarium. There she’d sit200 In the glassed sun and watch the fly that litUpon her dress and then upon her wrist.Her mind kept fading in the growing mist.She still could speak. She paused, then groped, and foundWhat seemed at first a serviceable sound,But from adjacent cells impostors tookThe place of words she needed, and her lookSpelt imploration as she sought in vainTo reason with the monsters in her brain.
What moment in the gradual decay210 Does resurrection choose? What year? What day?Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape?Are some less lucky, or do all escape?A syllogism: other men die; but IAm not another; therefore I’ll not die.Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,A singing in the ears. In this hive I’mLocked up. Yet, if prior to life we hadBeen able to imagine life, what mad,Impossible, unutterably weird,220 Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared!
So why join in the vulgar laughter? WhyScorn a hereafter none can verify:The Turk’s delight, the future lyres, the talksWith Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,The seraph with his six flamingo wings,And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?It isn’t that we dream too wild a dream:The trouble is we do not make it seemSufficiently unlikely; for the most230 We can think up is a domestic ghost.
How ludicrous these efforts to translateInto one’s private tongue a public fate!Instead of poetry divinely terse,Disjointed notes, Insomnia’s mean verse!
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.Anonymous.Anonymous.Espied on a pine’s bark,As we were walking home the day she died,An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed,Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,240 A gum-logged ant.A gum-logged ant. That Englishman in Nice,A proud and happy linguist: je nourrisLes pauvres cigales — meaning that heFed the poor sea gulls!Fed the poor sea gulls! Lafontaine was wrong:Dead is the mandible, alive the song.
And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hearYour steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear.
Sybil, throughout our high-school days I knewYour loveliness, but fell in love with youDuring an outing of the senior class250 To New Wye Falls. We luncheoned on damp grass.Our teacher of geology discussedThe cataract. Its roar and rainbow dustMade the tame park romantic. I reclinedIn April’s haze immediately behindYour slender back and watched your neat small headBend to one side. One palm with fingers spread,Between a star of trillium and a stone,Pressed on the turf. A little phalange boneKept twitching. Then you turned and offered me260 A thimbleful of bright metallic tea.
Your profile has not changed. The glistening teethBiting the careful lip; the shade beneathThe eye from the long lashes; the peach downRimming the cheekbone; the dark silky brownOf hair brushed up from temple and from nape;The very naked neck; the Persian shapeOf nose and eyebrow, you have kept it all —And on still nights we hear the waterfall.
Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,270 My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blestMy Admirable butterfly! ExplainHow could you, in the gloam of Lilac Lane,Have let uncouth, hysterical John ShadeBlubber your face, and ear, and shoulder blade?
We have been married forty years. At leastFour thousand times your pillow has been creasedBy our two heads. Four hundred thousand timesThe tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimesHas marked our common hour. How many more280 Free calendars shall grace the kitchen door?
I love you when you’re standing on the lawnPeering at something in a tree: “It’s gone.It was so small. It might come back” (all thisVoiced in a whisper softer than a kiss).I love you when you call me to admireA jet’s pink trail above the sunset fire.I love you when you’re humming as you packA suitcase or the farcical car sackWith round-trip zipper. And I love you most290 When with a pensive nod you greet her ghostAnd hold her first toy on your palm, or lookAt a postcard from her, found in a book.
She might have been you, me, or some quaint blend:Nature chose me so as to wrench and rendYour heart and mine. At first we’d smile and say:“All little girls are plump” or “Jim McVey(The family oculist) will cure that slightSquint in not time.” And later: “She’ll be quitePretty, you know”; and trying to assuage300 The swelling torment: “That’s the awkward age.”“She should take riding lessons,” you would say(Your eyes and mine not meeting). “She should playTennis, or badminton. Less starch, more fruit!She may not be a beauty, but she’s cute.”
It was no use, no use. The prizes wonIn French and history, no doubt, were fun;At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,And one shy little guest might be left out;But let’s be fair: while children of her age310 Were cast as elves and fairies on the stageThat she’d helped paint for the school pantomime,My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,A bent charwoman with a slop pail and broom,And like a fool I sobbed in the men’s room.