Aged Fifty
I
Sore that refuses to close,
Wound that will never heal,
Dream shadow that fades and flows,
Day on its whirling wheel –
Perhaps someone at last
Will find the how and why,
Explain when all is past
The torture and the cry –
How what I meant was well
And what I did was ill;
How I rued and feared and fell
To new delusions till
I finally petered down
To nothingness a prey –
And from my brows the crown,
Invisible, slipped away
II
Born into my own identity, I had
Only to be myself. But the age too dire
To brook such a purpose stood against me clad
In iron, terrible with light of fire.
And now I stand – dishonoured, dislaurelled, bowed.
And has the time no blame to bear? The time
Proclaims its innocence; protesting loud,
Absolves itself from error, madness, crime.
But I must live my “fame” out as I can
Uncompanied. Never was such a folk.
And folk is sufferance; myself: a man
Sprung from its seed, accustomed to the yoke.
What does the time want? Did it ever once
Regard me? Power heaped honours on my head
But sought no counsel. So the sore still runs.
And everything I spoke remains unsaid.
III
I would have wished my Soul to have
A little spot apart.
Far from Ambition, nigh the Dream,
Made beautiful by Art.
What stone and plant and beast may have,
Was this to me allowed? –
Thrown to feed the open-MOUTHED
Hunger of the crowd?
Here in this strange country, once
Flooded with wealth of song,
Discord reigns. Exiled indoors
I ache from music's wrong.
– And rub along. The peasant takes
Just payment from my hand.
His world confronts my world but does not
Touch it or understand.
About its madness rushed the greater
World the small disdains.
I stay a townie even in country
Boots in country lanes –
And, like Ovid in his mourning
For his native earth, I weep.
No earth is mine; I have not even
My own room to sleep.
Total this exile. Absolute.
Outsiders only see
Glamour of seeming not the inner
Burden that crushes me
Abandoned. With a mountain's weight
The spirit so oppressed.
My pain, the pain of all the world
Wakes greyly in my breast.
IV
I will not speak of things
Of which all ages tell.
The wrinkles old age brings,
Its scars are mine as well.
And death is the lot of the race.
But I accuse. Begin
With this: in the fall from grace
I have committed no sin.
The times, my times betrayed me
And therefore I accuse.
The griefs, my griefs upbraid me
And therefore I accuse –
Accuse the pain and blindness,
And am myself no more
Than the scales of human kindness
Which waits beyond the door.
V
Is this thing bearable?
Me, my own, I have hardly known.
Lonely and laughable.
A bitter thing to own.
My own was always Man, but he
Loads my descent with shame.
Blood, guilt, impiety:
These things are man – and I wear
His features, bear his name.
What stay? Assurance? Where?
If Man falls, what is of me
Falls too. And God? Does He care?
A drift of smoke. Débris …
VI
What can redeem us from evil
If not this sole resource?
A man must stand up to evil
Matching against it his force.
I tried – and my sleep is broken.
Comfort my dreams deny.
I have forgotten nothing;
I will not learn to lie.
The faces of Godhood, beasthood,
Worn through all in turn …
A life of half a century
Gave time to learn.
Page(s) 93-96
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