POEM

How sickening to be alone and desolate;

to suffer mental torture by the act

of merely thinking.

To grope

and, groping, not to find,

or finding, not to recognise.

What is it that revolts in me;

that booms and cannonades against my mind?

I think I could turn and live like Walt Whitman,

he is so certain and self-explained.

Yet it is far from easy

to face one’s past misdeeds;

for the mental censor holds them down,

distorts them, yet allows

the nausea to percolate,

escape and soil the brain;

disfigure and eliminate

the true, the clear, clean pain.

What is it that I want to say?

I probe, I seek, I stoop

to depths so base that even I,

the writer, player, perpetrator

of the piece, admits disgust.

But never will I let myself

achieve the end result;

an end to simple in itself,

so torturous to reach.

To tell the truth, naught else.

To whisper, shout, or preach the truth,

but more important yet:

admit it to myself;

to face that which I will not own.

Oh to be in April, now that May is here,

for the change from month to month is but

the van of year to year,

and though years that lie behind

evoke no pride in me; it’s clear

that the years which lie ahead

hold naught else for me but fear.

London. (‘fifties)