Transitional Poem
49
So I put passion awayIn a cold storage and took its tune on trust, While proper men with church-bellsSignal a practised or a dreamt-of lust . . . No fear could sublimateThe ennui of a tomb where music slept In artificial frost,Nor could it long persuade me to accept Rigidity for peace.Moon-stricken I worked out a solitude Of sand and sun, believingNo other soil could bear the genuine rood. But nothing grew exceptThe shadow at my heels. Now I confess There's no virtue in sand:It is the rose that makes the wilderness. I thought integrityNeeded a desert air; I saw it plain, A chimney of stone at evening,A monolith on the skyline after rain. Instead, the witless sunFertilised that old succubus and bred A skeleton in a shadow.Let cactus spring where hermits go to bed With those they come to kill.Three-legged I ran with that importunate curse, Till I guessed (in the sexual trance
