426
PARTISAN REVIEW
3.
Now is the time to grieve or rejoice
or be complacent; to finally give up;
to shrug. Also to take advantage,
for loyalty or pragmatically,
of the name, of the corpse (who can condemn it?)
Also to reserve judgment (who can condemn it?)
for a week, for a year, for history,
to institute another inquiry.
To choose the style of ambiguity
in order to tell the feelings o' the heart
(who can condemn it?) Now is the time to shrug
(who can condemn it?)
4.
If
the time was as Lev Davidovitch said,
now now is the time to mourn,
for the inventor of insurrection is dead,
moveless lies the chief of excitement
and the infernal machine
everywhere doesn't know when to explode.
If
the documents are authenticated
and if the facts confirm the theory,
now now is the time to curse ourselves,
not because our statesman is dead–
but ask, What time is. it? August 1940!
-if France could have been freed in 1936!
if Russia could have been freed in 1926!
This mourning isn't fatal; in his books
there is a next step; on his dying lips
there was an urgent call.
But
if
all o' this was lies, as may be,
spite and self.deception, even likely!
Is not the man who used to have the power
betrayed into desperate adventures,
