AUBADE
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In
time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer
now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the
dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
--The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn
off unused--nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But
at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be
here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast
moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear
a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear--no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing
to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows
each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In
furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others.
Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have
always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch,
getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has
to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
THIS BE THE VERSE
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the
faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time
were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And
don't have any kids yourself
