Farewell Chorus
20
DAVID GASCOYNE
1.
And so!
th~
long black pullman is at last departing, now,
After those undermining years of angry waiting and cold tea;
And all your small grey faces and wet hankies slide away
Backwards into the station's cave of cloud. And so Good-bye
To our home-town, so foreign now its lights no longer show;
And to old lives already indistinct as a dul.l play
We saw while staying somewhere in the Midlands long ago.
Farewell both to the few and to the many; for to-night
Our souls may be required of us; and so we say Adieu
To those who charmed us with their ever ready wit
But could not see the point; to those whose polished hands
And voices could allay a little while our private pain ·
But could not stay to soothe us when worse bouts began;
To those whose beauties were too brief: Farewell, dear friends.
To you as well whom we could never love, hard though
We tried, because our pity told us you were weak,
And whom because of pity we abhorred; to you
Whose gauche distress and badly-written postcards made us ache
With angrily impatient self-reproach; you who were too
Indelicately tender, whose too soft eyes made us look
(Against our uncourageous wish) swiftly away....
To those, too, whom we hardly knew, or could not know;
To the indifferent and the admired; to the once-met
And long-remembered faces: Yes, Good-bye to you
Who made us turn our heads to look again, and wait
For hours in vain at the same place :qext day;
-
.
