FOUR POEMS
65
Illusion and madness mock the years
(A Godforsaken farce, at best),
And yet through all these mounting fears
How I am glad that I exist!
How strange the truth appears at last!
I feel as old as outworn shoes,
I know what I have lost or missed,
Or certainly will some day lose,
And yet this knowledge, like the Jews,
Can make me glad that I exist!
with a hey ho, the foolish past,
and a ho ho and a ha ha at last.
THE WINTER TWILIGHT,
GLOWING BLACK AND GOLD
That time of year you may
in
me behold
When Christmas trees are blazing on the walk,
Raging amid stale snow against the cold,
Stretched in the low sky, shapeless and chalk.
Hissing and ravenous the brilliant plant,
Rising like eagerness, a rushing pyre
(As
when the
tutti
bursts forth, and the chant
Soars up--hurrahing !-from the Easter choir!)
But this is only true at four o'clock,
At noon the fifth year is once more abused,
I bring a distant girl apples and cake,
Pictures, secrets, lastly my swollen heart,
Now boxed and tied by what I know of art
-But as before accepted and refused.
