316
PARTISAN REVIEW
He never smiled but spun his strands of black
Among the secular crowd who, when he tripped their feet
Saw their own faces in the wet street, saw
Their hell beneath the street.
Among old iron, cinders, sizzling dumps,
A world castrated, amputated, trepanned,
He walked in the lost acres crying 'Repent
For the Kingdom of death is at hand.'
He took the books of pagan art and read
Between the lines or washed them out to prove
Humanism a palimpsest and God's
Anger a more primal fact than love.
And in the city at night where drunken song
Climbed the air like tendrils of vine
He bared a knife and slashed the roots and laid
Another curse on Cain. The sign
Of the cross between his eyes, his mouth drawn down,
He passed the flower-sellers and all
The roses reeked of an abattoir, the gardenias
Became the decor of a funeral.
His hands were always clenched, an eagle
Riveted on a world of vice;
Going upstairs he built, block upon block,
An Aztec pyramid of sacrifice.
Going upstairs to die in a bare room
He tried to square his accounts; lying in bed
He summoned home his deeds, drew back
Sixty years' expended thread,
Pulled it in through the chink beneath the door,
Wrapped it around him, all
His faith and his despair a ball of black
And he himself at the centre of the ball.
