Clouds Without Water

VITI One writes, and all is easy. Drop the pen, And Paradise is blotted out ! The earth, Fair as it seemed, becomes a hideous den, And all life’s promises of little worth. Like to a mother whose one child is dead I wander, aching for the sight, the sound, The touch — familiar, now inhibited. The child is under ground — is under ground— The child is under ground-— who comforts her ? The bastard fool her priest ? The useless clod Her husband? The accursed murderer Her God ? — if so be that she hath a God. Foul curses from my life’s envenomed flood Break in a vomit of black foam and blood. IX As one entranced by dint of cannabis, Whose sense of time is changed past recognition, Whether he suffer woe or taste of bliss, He loses both his reason and volition. He says one word — what countless ages pass! He walks across the room —— a voyage as far As the astronomer’s who turns his glass On faintest star-webs past the farthest star And travels thither in the spirit. So It seems impossible to me that ever The sands of our ill luck should run so low That splendidly success should match endeavour; Yet it must be, and very soon must be: For I believe in you, and you in me.