This was the end and yet, another start:
Held by the arms of lust from lust I pace
About the dim fulfilment of my art,
Impatient in the flesh I eye a space
Where, warlock, once I might have left this place,
A form of life my tool, creeping across
The shelving rock as rank convolvulus.
The Rock. The space, too narrow for a hand.
Pressing my head between two slopes of stone
I peer at what I do not understand,
The movement: clouds, and separate rooks blown
Back on their flight. Where do they fly, alone?
I lost their instinct. It was late. To me
The bird is only meat for augury.
And here the mauve convolvulus falls in,
Its narrow stalk as fat and rich in sap
As I was rich in lusting to begin
A life I could have had and finished up
Years, years before. With aphrodisiac
I brought back vigour; oiled and curled my hair;
Reduced my huge obesity, to wear
The green as tightly girdled at my waist
As any boy who leapt about the court;
And with an unguent I made my chest
Fit for the iron plate. I still held short
Of wrestling as the boys did: from their sport
They slid back panting on the tiles to look
At one distinguished now by scent, not book.
Love was a test: I was all-powerful,
So failed, because I let no fault intrude.
A philosophic appetite. By rule
I calculated each fond attitude
But those that self-distrust makes more than mood,
The quick illogical motions, negative
But evidence that lovers move and live.
I watch the flux I never guessed: the grass;
The watchful animal that gnaws a root,
Knowing possession means the risk of loss;
Ripeness that rests an hour in the fruit.
Yet locked here with the very absolute
I challenged, I must try to break the hold:
This cave is empty, and is very cold.
I must grow back through knoweldge, passing it
Like casual landmarks in a well-known land,
Great mausoleums over ancient wit,
Doors that would swing at my complacent hand;
And come at last, being glad to understand
The touched, the seen, and only those, to where
I find the earth is suddenly black and near.
And having reached the point where there remain
No knacks or habits, and these empty cells
Are matched by a great emptiness in my brain:
Unhampered by remembered syllables,
The youth I wasted at precocious spells
Will grow upon me, and my wants agree
In the sweet promiscuity of the bee.
And yet, the danger. All within my mind
Hovers complete, and if it never grows
It never rots; for what I leave behind
Contains no fight within itself: the rose
Is full and drops no petal, emblems doze
Perfect and quiet as if engraved in books,
Not like the fighting boys and wind-torn rooks.
The bee’s world and the rook’s world is the same:
Where clouds do, or do not, let through the light;
Too mixed, unsimple, for a simple blame;
Belligerent: but no one starts the fight,
And nothing ends it but a storm or night.
Alchemists, only, boil away the pain,
And pick out value as one small dry gain.
And turned upon the flooding relative,
What could I do but start the quest once more
Towards the terrible cave in which I live,
The absolute prison where chance thrust me before
I built it round me on my study floor;
What could I do but seek the synthesis
As each man does, of what his nature is?
Knowing the end to movement, I will shrink
From movement not for its own wilful sake.
-How can a man live, and not act or think
Without an end? But I must act, and make
The meaning in each movement that I take.
Rook, bee, you are the whole and not a part.
This is an end, and yet another start.
Leave a Reply