1.
The day’s so calm and muggy I sweat tears,
the summer’s cloudcap and the summer’s heat.…
Surely good writers write all possible wrong—
are we so conscience-dark and cataract-blind,
we only blame in others what they blame in us?
(The sentence writes we, when charity wants I.…)
It takes such painful mellowing to use error.…
I have stood too long on a chair or ladder,
branch-lightning forking through my thought and veins—
I cannot hang my heavy picture straight.
I can’t see myself … in the cattery,
the tomcats doze till the litters are eatable,
then find their kittens and chew off their breakable heads.
They told us by harshness to win the stars.
2.
Plains, trains, lorries simmer through the garden,
the reviewer sent by God to humble me
ransacking my bags of dust for silver spoons—
he and I go on typing to go on living.
There are ways to live on words in England—
reading for trainfare, my host ruined on wine,
my ear gone bad from clinging to the ropes.
I’d take a lower place, eat my toad hourly;
even big frauds wince at fraudulence,
and squirm from small incisions in the self—
they live on timetable with no time to tell.
I’m sorry, I run with the hares now, not the hounds.
I waste hours writing in and writing out a line,
as if listening to conscience were telling the truth.