That beggar to whom·you gave no cent
Striped the night with his strange descant.
III
Yet I cannot escape the picture
Of my small self in that bank of flowers:
My head among the blazing phlox
Seemed a pale and gigantic fungus.
I had a hard stare, accepting
Everything, taking nothing,
As
if the rolled-up future might stink
As loud as stood the sick moment
The shutter clicked. Though I was wrong,
Still, as the loveliest feelings
Must soon find words, and these, yes,
Displace them, so I am not wrong
I n calling this comic version of myself
The true one. For as change is horror,
Virtue is really stubbornness
And only in the light of lost words
Can we imagine our rewards.
Louis Simpson
THE RETURN
You that have returned to the western city,
To whom returning has become a habit
And a belief in immortality,
Yet, as the porter takes your bags
How quickly are you hurried out of truth
To meet those faces, faces of your youth,
Of age, stone eagles on their crags,
Stricken faces you must reassure
That you, and they, are still as you were.
