The Dilemmist

There's waking and dressing and what a fine day,
And to take and to leave and to laugh at or not.
There's the same as there was, though there's other.

There's seeing, or to read, as you will.
There's living and knowing like two lives.
There's knowing and living like two books.
What a holiday, one from the other!
And how long can it last?

There's time though there's no time.
There's doing though nothing to do.
There are two fairs, each a most fair,
And choosing between would lose both.
But how long can not-choosing claim both?
How long can your head keep turning
Between left and right so instantly
That you hold in one look what in two
Were perhaps loss of each —
How long flesh and spirit be twin
Equals in neitherhood?

But fear nothing, impartial lover
Of the proved past and the unprovable future.
The present endures with the greed
Of making one sense of two passions.
Fear nothing, unless passion's thinning
Between such an opposite pair.
For both honour the heart they confound.
Mortality's a handsome matron,
Or Death's a lady of commanding elegance.

Indeed, you cannot put the first by —
She's an old love, by her you had
Such children as declare the man,
Robust inventions of your dreaming limbs.
The other is a later pledge, and cruel,
Ghost-families her brood.
And yet the dower is a queen's:
On a breast loud with common victories
Her silent badges swing unchallengeable.

But how long such balance of faiths,
Neither keeping and neither breaking?
How long will the careless sun make warm
While you go a-wintering with fancy —
The moon adoring with sun-given eyes?

There's this and that the same stroke now.
There's near-loss and near-gain, there's between.
There's rumour of end, and no ending.
And how often shall the rapt pendulum
Not travel, nor deliver itself
Either back, to the last hour,
Or forward, to failing?
Why, but once, clock-romantic:
For how long can your noisy ear endure
The unwound never-ticking,
And your hands the not-winding?
How long your pulse pause, world of motion?

Why, you'd rather again the old hours,
The swift deaths and new lives and changes,
Than to be dawdling-dead like a poet,
With but one death to die, and that everyone's.
Humanity is no poet till it must be:
The book entices far the blood,
Humanity sits down to read not die.

And when the blood frights and reverses,
That's time to close the book and follow.
Humanity is no poet till it must be.
First comes the need of blood, the fire-water,
To flow and burn and be so many founts
Of year-eternities in like of sun;
By combustion of fear, drought into flame,
Flame into liquid length of will again.
Forward is frozen will only,
A stranger's tomb only, dead thought.

When's man a poet then? And was he ever one?
For if a death with the held moment stays
That is not struck — when frantic flesh
Runs homeward after blood fleeing
To previous courses and reddened turns —
That's none of him, no part forgotten,
But of his second love a fancy
Lying man-like in her fancied arms,
With her own foolishness her arms filled.

The man's away after the man.
She understood his wooing wrong.
He never meant her more than paper,
Nor does his heart one icy line remember.
Nor does she with a memory engage,
Crying, " My love was he, and he's lost,"
Since in his stolen coming at her
He was gone from her, nor had been.

The same cry these do cry, one cry:
" All is over, all is over, all!"
A small cry, then he's back to time again,
And she athwart the cry, as on a love
None uttered and may yet be ridden —
The cry she silent cried, nor ever he,
Except the blood, scorching, send him all-speed
To look for other clime than body-heat,
Be that however sunless other-place,
And he in such mad hate of self
To swear madness against his likest love.
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