Classic Poem

Do I know how I feel? Do I know what I think?
Let me take ink and paper, let me take pen and ink ...
Or with my hat and gloves, as if to take the air
Walk softly down the hall, stop at the foot of the stair
Take my letters from the porter — ask him for a drink
If I questioned him with care, would he tell me what I think and feel
— Or only " You are the gentleman who has lived on the second floor
For a year or more " —
Yet I dread what a flash of madness might reveal
If he said " Sir we have seen so much beauty spilled on the open street
Or wasted in stately marriages or stained in railway carriages
Or left untasted in villages or stifled in darkened chambers
That if we are restless on winter nights, who can blame us? "

Do I know how I feel? Do I know how I think?
There is something which should be firm but slips, just at my finger tips.
There will be a smell of creolin and the sound of something that drips
A black bag with a pointed beard and tobacco on his breath
With chemicals and a knife
Will investigate the cause of death that was also the cause of the life —
Would there be a little whisper in the brain
A new assertion of the ancient pain
Or would this other touch the secret which I cannot find?

My brain is twisted in a tangled skein
There will be a blinding light and a little laughter
And the sinking blackness of ether
I do not know what, after, and I do not care either