362

I take your tickets on the Hudson line.

Out of my infrequent death no flower grow,

Out of my solitude no overt word,

Out of my silence

                              An eloquence,

In which my instrument move, dumb to all

Command, and my life fall upon its cause.

I take your ticket on the Hudson line,

Watching in its each instance

                                                Tired arms,

Infant-eye's dark wellshaft, barren scalp,

Slender girl-thigh, fallen mother breast,

All, move in recognition of some other,

As my instrument move, but not speak of it.

Look to one another, and I watch you

Through our passage, out of my practice

Less love than may come between you all,

Broken as I am, in these sullen clothes,

Hard at my métier, that I stand until

Out of it I fall and my tears fall from me,

And that I love you all where you lay silent.

For that my body cannot communicate,

I chemical am, here,

                                 Waiting to be resigned.

361

Will you bring to me my ceremony

In what clothes I have now demanded it?

Or stay yet on the dull border of things,

White blooms of air erupting from your lips,

In mushroomlike ascent and in the colour

Of the water that, bending, now disperse—

Will you? Are these arctiidae that gather

At your nostrils, or of some manufacture

Else, of which I know no more than horror?

Our centuries have gone above us to

Where coral breaks the starshoals. The bear,

Once my companion, dances for another King.

I wait only for your word or your touch

To tell me that the music has elapsed

And we return into the earth, that all

Our lineage give out and like the lantern

The curtain quieted, dim. I will go down

Gracefully, as if a final sovereignty

Allowed itself to lead me there. My crown

Holds in its band the stars and all my making :

Nephropid, I wake, dressed in my armour.

Let us leave this dream, my last child—

I see where sparks blow out upon the tide.

360

A moment while I determine myself.

Lay us a further note upon the bar.

My hope to you, proud friend, and

What's more of it God give you health,

And Mr. Creeley I withdraw, modest,

A modest word that I had gone too far.

Your muttonchops cannot err in respect

Of my comportment. So, good night to you.

Last of the pier against the dark window :

Last of my breath blown soft into the flask.

We do only what all the others do,

Given half an allowance of our self,

To stir, and may it be beyond it go.

And it is in that spirit that I pass

Among you brave dragoons, that watch

My body so well, that keep me before

The time should come. Watch the fire, sir,

That it not dwindle in your hands! Be sure

I will address you a measure tonight,

If I make it up Cavendish's stairs.

Or halfway only, father bless his might

That takes me damaged up to sleep.

I will not for the station or I will

Not find freedom there. I am thirsty here,

In my lightest clothes, Lord, still.

Now down the pier and we again shall drink.

Keep you Creeley, friend, and may he you keep.

359

How out of its trajectory our project

Grows, now that in our later colouring

We appear, shy, each with a cigarette,

To speak a while and haul our memories in,

Before the Flatiron building's grey façade!

There is no longer the selfconsciousness

That lit your voice for years. What we shared

Then, of blarney and romantic address,

Must have atrophied while you were away.

You are become that sad old master we

Once lampooned, who spoke of his own day

As it should compass every fire, every

Farflung grandeur. I cannot see you through

The smoke : a person stands in place of you.

358

How should I speak naïveté

In sight of you and not go down

Before the wall and all remove

And slightly worsen in the sound,

As you of all things sunder from

Subtle sense, that stability,

In its broken costume, whereof

The deadened colours amplify?

No gesture yet to conjure up—

Haul out, my cherished fires! Befard

The wholesome panther in his first

Uniform, show there loveliness

And the dolent Schande bloom

In great salt washes from his heart.

An instant bears its weight forth : so,

Hold there the sentence in its place.

I am in every ambulance

Carried, that would restore me out.

O now hollow memory, rest ;

Allow the animal its tristesse.