Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China,
If that someone who’s me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me, as he is, shouldn’t he have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said?
If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were there then, shouldn’t he have warned me he’d even now devastate me for my unpardonable affront?
I’m a child then, yet already I’ve composed this conscience-beast, who harries me: is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I, that he,
could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords of remorse,
he lives in a house with a swimming pool and says the job is killing him. he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem to get rid of him. his novels keep coming back. “what do you expect me to do?” he screams “go to New York and pump the hands of the
1 Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere (Horace, Epistles II.i.267) While you, great patron of mankind, sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
ROXANA from the court retiring late, Sigh'd her soft sorrows at St. JAMES's gate: Such heavy thoughts lay brooding in her breast, Not her own chairmen wth more weight opprest; They groan the cruel load they're doom'd to bear ; She in these gentler sounds express'd her care.
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