Стихи и эссе

Ashamed to be the darling of his grief
He joined a gang of rowdy stories where
His gift for magic quickly made him chief
Of all these boyish powers of the air;

Who turned his hungers into Roman food,

The town's asymmetry into a park;
All hours took taxis; any solitude
Became his flattered duchess in the dark.

But if he wished for anything less grand,

The nights came padding after him like wild
Beasts that meant harm, and all the doors cried Thief;

And when Truth met him and put out her hand,

He clung in panic to his tall belief
And shrank away like an ill-treated child.

7. The Second Temptation

The library annoyed him with its look
Of calm belief in being really there;
He threw away a rival's silly book,
And clattered panting up the spiral stair.

Swaying upon the parapet he cried:

"O Uncreated Nothing, set me free
Now let Thy perfect be identified,
Unending passion of the Night, with Thee."

And his long suffering flesh, that all the time

Had felt the simple cravings of the stone
And hoped to be rewarded for her climb,

Took it to be a promise when he spoke

That now at last she would be left alone,
And plunged into the college quad, and broke.

8. The Third Temptation

He watched with all his organs of concern
How princes walk, what wives and children say;
Reopened old graves in his heart to learn
What laws the dead had died to disobey.

And came reluctantly to his conclusion:

"All the arm-chair philosophers are false;
To love another adds to the confusion;
The song of pity is the Devil's Waltz."

And bowed to fate and was successful so

That soon he was the king of all the creatures:
Yet, shaking in an autumn nightmare saw,

Approaching down a ruined corridor,

A figure with his own distorted features
That wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.

9. The Tower

This is architecture for the odd;
Thus heaven was attacked by the afraid,
So once, unconsciously, a virgin made
Her maiden head conspicuous to a god.

Here on dark nights while worlds of triumph sleep

Lost Love in abstract speculation burns,
And exiled Will to politics returns
In epic verse that lets its traitors weep.

Yet many come to wish their tower a well;

For those who dread to drown of thirst may die,
For those who see all become invisible:

Here great magicians caught in their own spell

Long for a natural climate as they sigh
"Beware of Magic" to the passer-by.

10. The Presumptuous