HART CRANE NEAR THE END
1.
The woman in love with him
Pleads with him, "Why
Must there be such misery?
What is there in you that wants this?"
And still he does not feel it,
Feels nothing, sealed in his self.
The beach house is filled up.
The guests drift in and out
Talking in wafts, sozzled,
Sunburns moonlit; dappled fluttering
Shirts at summery games. But
Now near dawn it's cold. He sees
The clock ticks swimming through the air,
Swimming eyelashed eyelets tiny as rotifers.
A warped smile is everywhere,
Half in, half out of water.
In youth more delicate than the boy Rimbaud's,
The sunset nose, lips like blood sausages ...
Course of the day's
Lost, unsought breaths, uncounted,
Each separate as a life, a guest.
His life had purposes!
The hall clock ticks . . .
Oh the heresies, Oh each distinct,
Blue and bright and trite and evil, each,
Those efforts to see the Light
Chasing each other's tails-
Whirled into moral butter like Black Sambo's tigers,
As
the phonograph spins Ravel's "Bolero."
