That Delightful Rag

O O O O that Shakespeherian rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent.

But what we can say?
We are starved for words.
The head hurts,
From oversleeping
Or some other ailment,
And the body feels like dead weight.

Life is very long.
Soon there will be no need
To scuttle around like this,
Figuring things out for no other reason
Than to figure them out.
The eyes that would see are now pressed
Lidless against the bottoms of caskets,
Buried as their owners were on their stomachs.
Such is the custom in that distant, nameless land
Of which we write.
Sublated emotions disappear into outer space,
Never to return to their original, coherent forms,
If ever they existed.
The backs of certain heads
Are forever in our field of vision;
And when we move,
They move with us,
So that the faces are forever invisible.
At times a whisper is detectable
To our left,
So faint that it could be the sound of the water
Crawling up the slopes of roofs above our head,
Or the infant in the farther room
Being smothered under the breast
Of the woman whom we did not hire
To nurse it.

The idle sound of the clock--
Tic tic tic tic tic--
Never an accompanying "toc"
To wrap the phrase up,
Never
The end we so anticipate
To the event
Which we could not forfend,
The beginning which was never ours.
We do not pretend
That the world is our playground,
That the corpses at the back of our mind
Are dead.
Such singular fantasy is the burial ground
Of the dreams and efforts
Of people born in the night.

Music is all that we have left,
In a world in which nothing ever leaves--
The sweet, melodious voice
Of the disfigured carpet
On which tread
The feet of those who
Never stop.
Drops of blood on occasion
Are bled.
The memory thus formed
Swells and dies
Like the memory of the cup
Passing from lip to lip,
Like the mouthpiece of the trumpet
Of the traveler from no land,
Who has ears only for himself.

What began as a journey,
What began as numerous circles
Carven into the earth
Till the earth itself resembled a circle
Plastered on the surface of that eternal sphere,
Where you and we were born,
Ended only the other day--
Were you not aware?--
Ended only the other day,
When
The men from that other house--
That one made of brown wood
At the end of the lane
Where no one dares to go at night
Or thinks of going in the day--
When the men,
Their faces turned away from us,
Rang our doorbell,
And bade us go to sleep.

What is that ballad that I hear,
Ringing in my right ear?
(For the left one has been deafened
By whispers that were never uttered
By mouths we see moving
Year after year.)
Forming dreams are best left untouched,
For they will collapse unaided
Under their own weight
Before the dreamer awakes.
But softly now,
For he is asleep.

But what is that ballad,
Growing ever the louder in my right ear?
It tells of mountains, of valleys,
Of a slightly eccentric seer,
Who dwells in caves, far and near,
And tells the fortunes of those
Who are condemned to have none.
Let us go there,
My dear,
Let us go there.
For the violent silence,
Colored red in my field of vision,
Where the only colors are red and black,
Is coming ever the nearer.
Let us go,
Before it sees that our eyes are open.