Archibald

The bear who sits above my bed

    A doleful bear he is to see;

From out his drooping pear-shaped head

    His woollen eyes look into me.

He has no mouth, but seems to say:

‘They’ll burn you on the Judgment Day.’

Those woollen eyes, the things they’ve seen

    Those flannel ears, the things they’ve heard—

Among horse-chestnut fans of green,

    The fluting of an April bird,

And quarrelling downstairs until

Doors slammed at Thirty One West Hill.

The dreaded evening keyhole scratch

    Announcing some return below,

The nursery landing’s lifted latch,

    The punishment to undergo—

Still I could smooth those half-moon ears

And wet that forehead with my tears.

Whatever rush to catch a train,

    Whatever joy there was to share

Of sounding sea-board, rainbowed rain,

    Or seaweed-scented Cornish air,

Sharing the laughs, you still were there,

You ugly, unrepentant bear.

When nine, I hid you in a loft

    And dared not let you share my bed;

My father would have thought me soft,

    Or so at least my mother said.

She only then our secret knew,

And thus my guilty passion grew.

The bear who sits above my bed

    More agèd now he is to see,

His woollen eyes have thinner thread,

    But still he seems to say to me,

In double-doom notes, like a knell:

‘You’re half a century nearer Hell.’

Self-pity shrouds me in a mist,

    And drowns me in my self-esteem.

The freckled faces I have kissed

    Float by me in a guilty dream.

The only constant, sitting there,

Patient and hairless, is a bear.

And if an analyst one day

    Of school of Adler, Jung or Freud

Should take this agèd bear away,

    Then, oh my God, the dreadful void!

Its draughty darkness could but be

Eternity, Eternity.