PART OF THE VIGIL
... shrinking to enter, did. Your heart
Was large-you'd often told me-large but light,
Ant palace, tubercular coral sponge amazed
With passages, quite weightless in your breast.
(Or did my entrance weigh? You never said.)
In
sunlit outer galleries I pondered
Names, dates, political slogans, lyrics,
Football scores, obscenities too, scrawled
Everywhere dense as lace. How alike we were!
More than pleased, I penetrated further.
Strung haphazard now through the red gloom
Were little, doorless, crudely lighted chambers:
Four waxen giants at supper; the late king;
A dust-furred dog; a whore mottled with cold,
Legs in air; your motorbike; a friend,
Glass raised despite the bandage round
his
head,
His eyes' false shine. What had happened to them all?
Yet other cells appeared empty but lit,
Or darkly, inconceivably tenanted.
From one, a word sobbed over: 'Waste ... the waste .. .'
Where was the terrace, the transparency
So striking far away?
In
my fall I struck
An iron surface (so: your heart was heavy)
Hot through clothing. Snatched myself erect.
Beneath, the gasp and wheeze of great valves. What
If
all you knew of me were down there, leaking
Fluids at once abubble, pierced by fierce
