176
PARTISAN REVIEW
Of what was believed in as the most reliable–
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.
There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless.
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage, ·
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.
Where is the end of them, the fishermen sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.
We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the.hardly, barely pray·
able
Prayer of the one Annunciation.
It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to
be
a mere
sequence-
Or even dewlopment: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a ·means of disowning the
past.
