POEMS
THE CONCLUSION
September
1, 1957
I
How slow time moves when torment stops the clock,
How donnant and delinquent, under the dawn,
The uproarious roaring of the bursting cock:
Now pain ticks on, now all and nothing must be borne,
And I remember: pain is the cost of being born.
II
For when the fires of infatuation fade
The furs which love in all its warmth discloses
Become the fires of pride and are betrayed
By those whom love has terrified and pride has made afraid.
No matter what time prepares, no matter how time amazes
The images by which we live or die,
Pride is not love and pride
is
merely pride
Until pride
is
or pride becomes a living death which denies
How it is treacherous and faithless, how it betrays,
Everyone, one by one, and every vow,
Seeking praise absolute, the praise of every gaze,
A fame which has never been, and even now
Flees to the brothels, hides with other whores
Whom pride and time seduces and love ignores.
III
This will be true long after heart and heart
Have recognized and forgotten all that was ripening, ripe,
rotten-ripe and rotten,
Have known too soon, too soon by far, how much of love
has been forgotten:
Have known the little deaths before death do us part :
