To this room – it was somewhere at the palace’s
Heart, but no one, not even visiting royalty
Or reigning mistress, ever had been inside it –
To this room he’d retire.
Graciously giving himself to, guarding himself from
Courtier, suppliant, stiff ambassador,
Supple assassin, into this unviewed room
He, with the air of one urgently called from
High affairs to some yet loftier duty,
Dismissing them all, withdrew.
And we imagined it suitably fitted out
For communing with a God, for meditation
On the Just City; or, at the least, a bower of
Superior orgies … He
Alone could know the room as windowless
Though airy, bare yet filled with the junk you find
In any child-loved attic; and how he went there
Simply to taste himself, to be reassured
That under the royal action and abstraction
He lived in, he was real.
1 Seferis (George Seferiades) was Greek Ambassador in London at this time. The conflict between the particularly public career of diplomat with the private one of poet intrigued CDL.