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MERCURIAL
not in his power to give
love and cease loving
or to rise in rude energy
but broken by his art
he shut himself up
became passive
and disintegrated into
incremental shrinkings
back into his heart
as weary travelers will with
friendly regret and apprehension末
his bitterness apparent but
more and more benetted in fancies
living wholly among
the troubled, as a film rose
and thickened on his eyes末
how nature was seen in
the turn of the years
haunted by ugly dreams
and the comfort of nightmares,
afraid of sleep itself,
of the way he壇 retired into stoniness.
To return to the specific
more generous with
the general drift of how in the
highest and outermost
he dreamed a great deal
that was yet to come
made lowly wise
by each ascension
in theme and tone toward
giving up and going away末
closing in upon an image or custom
numbing as deeply as frost
but not about what he had
and had not achieved末
his mind more fertile in this
than any design of how winter
had become what had always been
nothing more than
a disposition to catch fire末
its motion free of his own history
and whether he could ever
have too much past to be
beaten by the world,
to understand himself as
what he knew was now
essentially the same
good in itself
and the idealism that fueled him
was itself the final degradation
almost certainly
further and further into error
by which word I mean
whatever is loftier and more capricious
than temporal nature末
to incite
by traveling the distance
as it had always been
and to convert that knowledge
into a shape of the world
which was
a very good trip
until the ship broke up
into spars and driftwood末
insensible with cold until the sea
swept him away末
blameless of the wreck末
that it was other than it was
and not destroyed by death
or the dread of things
as an old man might,
facing what he had been unable to,
or a spot made sacred in his own mind末
like white hot stars upon dark green fields
where they used to walk
isolated figures against immensity
delicious long after
he heard no more
of that old sort of hope
and its ruined towers,
was now this末
sunsets over flat landscapes and
subterranean light from coal-pits
then brought to a small glade
belted with evergreens, unvaried
and secluded, radiant with
colors more hardy and of the place末
monstrous in color, the green grass
floor and two mute inhabitants,
here and there a solitary flower
not as illustrations in books,
but as those with whom he had
an hour by the fireside末
more like his old self
which talked of common things
末the hoped for one末
and so much that must be lovely
and almost as old as the world,
how autumnal premonitions
quickened into summer
as vigorous as anything
in his manner at this moment
proven to exist, lower than
what is called a wish to live
in the broad light of the world,
but to suffer and endure
any flow of feeling
which engendered in him
what he was末the mood of his
own mind brought to rest
as she was fervent and imperious
and more moderate than could be endured
in what he valued most
and always did in
something we have all seen, or may see,
calculated to excite his imagination, and slept
in a state of degradation
taking comfort in
what the world allowed him to see末
visions shaping the whole of his life into
a hymn to movement
was his answer, mercurial, the full force
of the eastern wind
and every other
worry, unable to see
with a candle in his hand
the endless task of keeping things clean. |