Which
is
not now that honey-slow descent
Of
the Champs-Elysees, her hand in
his,
But the dull need to make some kind of house
Out of the life lived, out of the love spent.
THE CLIMB
James Merrill
Where, like a whip, at the foot of the stairs
The banister rail licks round at them,
In a hushed flock they find they are huddled:
The night defunct, in their upturned faces
The party gone out like a light,
And more than one of them open-mouthed
As
horses reined up suddenly,
Hearing
Above the blood drumming in their ears
And the crepitant bulb in the dumb house,
Strained banisters creaking like rockers
Where the lurching cripple, drunk as a kite,
Scrapes, thuds, and snuffling half the time
On all fours, hauls himself upwards
On the stairs over their heads,
Like
Some weakness of their own: not to
be
helped
(Rather tum offensive) and at no time
To
be
denied-inviting
himself
Along with them on the wrong occasion
That way, and soon goatish in
his
liquor,
Stumbling in boats by the moonlit lake,
Clawing and hugging not to fall-
