PARTISAN REVIEW
Home in the clumsy dusk-how now
Care which from which, trapped on a racing star
Where we know not who we are! . . .
The whipcord frenzy curls, he slouches where his brow
Works like the rivals' failed.
Of six young men he flew to breakfast as,
Only the magpie, rapist, stayed
For dinner, and the 'rapist died, so that
Not the magpie but the cat
Vigil upon the magpie stalks, sulky parade,
Great tail switching like jazz.
Frightened, dying to fly, pied and obscene,
He blinks his own fantastic watch
For the indolent Spring of what he was before;
A stipple of sunlight, clouded o'er,
Remorse a scribble on the magic tablet which
A schoolboy thumb jerks clean.
Heat lightning straddles the horizon dusk
Above the yews: the fresh wind blows:
He flicks a station on by the throneside . .
Out in the wide world,
Kitty- wide
Night-far across the sea
...
Some guardian accent grows
Below the soft voice, brusque:
"You are: not what you wished but what you were,
The decades' vise your gavel brands,
You glare the god who gobbled his own fruit,
He who stood mute, lucid and mute,
Under peine forte et dure to will his bloody lands,
Then whirled down without heir."
The end of which he will not know. Undried,
A pruneskin helpless on his roof.
His skin gleams in the lamplight dull as gold
And old gold clusters like mold
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