THE Room is getting cold, one gas-light burns
And the fire is now a monotonous red glow ;
The old bookcase and the books in it,
Old and ancient in matter and in age –
Gathered mental flowers and weeds of men
Who dreamed strange dreams and moved
In a stranger way to our modern eyes ;
The speech on wings or stilts, the poetry
Fetches out saliva with its utter sweetness,
Or, direct as the passage of a needle-point,
Pierces the epidermis of a latter age ;
To whom our own tempestuous and neurotic time
Is a swish on cheek with a splint of steel.
My dirty boots lie in the fender – rigid
And unceasingly grim ticks the clock ;
Dregs in cup and glass late mouth-touched, the flowers
Dead in vase, the cloth, sofa and the pictures
And the feeling of a room half-asleep –
Grows the coldness, I shiver a little.
Huddle close to the now dead fire.
Mentally doze, start to transient life.
Languish, visions and old dreams, dreamt
Again and again, switch o’er my forehead ;
The seconds pass, cold grows all, at last
I draw the last smoke from my cigarette and, flung
In the ashy grate, it gleams with anguish, drops
Into its nether ash, its ultimate dust
And swells the earth-bunch of death matter,
I shiver again, turn out light and the dark
Closes round me like the clutch of a black
And potent liqueur – drift upstairs and into bed
I creep, a nether ash, in the day’s last ash,
Dropped into its ultimate dust,
I will go, one night, finally into ultimate dust
And wake on earth again, atomic, in flower
Or part of a brick of a house where beings dwell
Who light a life to smoke its timorous length,
Perhaps to the end, perhaps not, of its nether ash,
Inevitably, irrevocably flicker and gleam
And then, the ultimate dust, the ultimate dust.
(Bernard Waters)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, Life Poems, Night Poems, Sadness Poems, Time Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Dreams Poems, Flowers Poems, Fire Poems, Literature Poems, Books PoemsBased on Keywords: stilts, fender, ashy, half-asleep, inevitably, fetches, unceasingly, irrevocably, saliva, bookcase, mentally