Indulgent, or candid, or uncommon reader
—I’ve some: a wife, a nun, a ghost or two—
If I write for anyone, I wrote for you;
So whisper, when I die, We was too few;
Write over me (if you can write; I hardly knew)
That I—That I—but anything will do,
I’m satisfied….And yet—
                                          and yet, you were too few:
Should I perhaps have written for your brothers,
Those artful, common, unindulgent others?

Mortal men, man! mortal men! So says my heart
Or else my belly—some poor empty part.
It warms in me, a dog beside a stove,
And whines, or growls, with a black lolling smile:
I never met the man I didn’t love.
Life’s hard for them…these mortals…Lie, man, lie!
Come, give it up,—this whining poetry;
To any man be anything. If nothing works,
Why then, Have Faith.
                                  That blessed word, Democracy!

But this is strange of you: to tempt me now!
It brings back all the past: those earliest offers
—How can I forget?—EACH POEM GUARANTEED
A LIE OR PERMANENTLY IRRELEVANT.
WE FURNISH POEMS AND READERS. What a slogan!
(I had only to give credit to “my daemon”;
Say, confidentially, “dictated by the devil.”)
I can still see my picture in that schoolroom.
And next—who has it now?—The World’s Enormity,
That novel of the Wandering Jewess, Lilith,
Who went to bed with six millennia.
(It came complete with sales, scenario,
And testimonials of grateful users:
Not like a book at all…Beats life….)
                                                          Beats life.
How ill we knew each other then! how mockingly
I nodded, “Almost thou persuadest me,”
And made my offer:
                                 “If ever I don’t say
To the hour of life that I can wish for: Stay,
Thou art so fair! why, you may have my—
Shadow.”
              Our real terms were different
And signed and sealed for good, neither in blood
Nor ink but in my life: Neither to live
Nor ask for life—that wasn’t a bad bargain
For a poor devil of a poet, was it?
One makes a solitude and calls it peace.
So you phrased it; yet—yet—one is paid:
To see things as they are, to make them what they might be—
Old Father of Truths, old Spirit that Accepts—
That’s something….If, afterwards, we broke our bargain—

He interrupts: But what nobility!
I once saw a tenor at the Opéra Comique
Who played the Fisher—of Pearls or else of Souls.
He wore a leopard-skin, lay down, and died;
And sang ten minutes lying on his side
And died again; and then, applauded,
Gave six bows, leaning on his elbow,
And at the seventh started on his encore.
He was, I think, a poet.
                                              Renounce, renounce,
You sing in your pure clear grave ardent tones                         
And then give up—whatever you’re afraid to take,
Which is everything; and after that take credit
For dreaming something else to take its place.
Isn’t what is already enough for you?
Must you always be making something?
Must each fool cook a lie up all his own?
You beings, won’t even being disgust you
With causing something else to be? Make, make—
You squeak like mice; and yet it’s all hypocrisy—
How often each of you, in his own heart,
Has wiped the world out, and thought afterwards:
No need to question, now: “If others are, am I?”
Still, I confess that I and my good Neighbor
Have always rather envied you existence.
Your simple conceits!—but both of us enjoy them:
“Dear God, make me Innocent or Wise,”
Each card in the card-catalogue keeps praying;
And dies, and the divine Librarian
Rebinds him—
                          rebinds? that’s odd; but then, He’s odd
And as a rule—
                         I’m lying: there’s no rule at all.
The world divides into—believe me—facts.

I see the devil can quote Wittgenstein.
He’s blacker than he’s painted.
                                                  Old ink-blot,
What are you, after all? A parody.
You can be satisfied? then how can I?
If you accept, is not that to deny?
A Dog in a tub, who was the Morning Star!
To have come down in the universe so far
As here, and now, and this—and all to buy
One bored, stoop-shouldered, sagging-cheeked particular
Lest the eternal bonfire fail—
                                                ah Lucifer!
But at blacker an embarrassed smile
Wavers across his muzzle, he breaks in:
It’s odd that you’ve never guessed: I’m through.
To tempt, sometimes, a bored anachronism
Like you into—but why should I say what?
To stretch out by the Fire and improvise:
This pleases me, now there’s no need for me.
Even you must see I’m obsolescent.
A specialist in personal relations,
I valued each of you at his own worth.
You had your faults; but you were bad at heart.
I disliked each life, I assure you, for its own sake.
—But to deal indifferently in life and death;
To sell, wholesale, piecemeal, annihilation;
To—I will not go into particulars—
This beats me.
                       To men, now, I should give advice?
I’m vain, as you know, but not ridiculous.
Here in my inglenook, shy, idle, I conclude:
I never understand them: as the consequence
They end without me….
                                      “Scratch a doctor
And find a patient,” I always used to say.
Now that I’ve time, I’ve analyzed myself
And find that I an growing, or have grown—
Was always, perhaps, indifferent.
It takes a man to love or hate a man
Wholeheartedly. And how wholeheartedly
You act out All that is deserves to perish!
As if to take me at my word— an idle mot
That no one took less seriously than I.
It was so, of course; and yet—and yet—

I find that I’ve grown used to you. Hell gives us habits
To take the place of happiness, alas!
When I look forward, it is with a pang
That I think of saying, “My occupation’s gone.”
But twelve’s striking: time to be in bed.

I think: He’s a changed—all this has shaken him.
He was always delicate: a spirit of society,
A way to come to terms—
                                           now, no more terms!

Those pleasant evenings of denunciation!
How gratefully, after five acts’ rejection,
A last firm shake and quaver and statistic,
He’d end, falsetto: “But let’s be realistic”—
Had he, perhaps, exaggerated? He had exaggerated…
How quietly, a little later, he’d conclude:
“I accept it all.”
                     And now to be unable
To accept, to have exaggerated—
                                                      to do anything:
It’s hard for him. How often he has said,
“I like you for always doing as you please”—
He couldn’t. Free will appealed so much to him;
He thought, I think: If they’ve the choice…

He was right. And now, to have no choice!