PURGATORY

There was a picture hanging in the gallery of my soul

Of one ideal in character, in body and in mind,

A vision conjured up by blind and beautiful desire,

Perfect in form, perfect in heart, by perfection inspired,

Possessing both the virtues and the sensual attributes,

While clean and uncorruptible, and faithful, true and kind,

Instilling into frail man a modicum of strength.

But rare it is for woman to compare with an ideal

In beauty physical or of the spirit, and must yield

Both mentally and bodily, for human frailty shows

And honesty and faithfulness to selfishness give way.

My vision crumbled fast in unassuageable decay

And disillusion rapidly took inspiration’s place;

Where once was something concrete now is gaping void shown.

Thus mental desolation now does stare me in the face;

That love-inspired creation that proceeded from my mind,

Unreached, yet not unreachable, has ceased to be alive;

Has fallen from her pedestal, while all about I hear

The laughing, gloating, caustic comments of those whom I once

Did deign to call my friends. They know naught else but how to mock

And scatter on the wind of scorn all vestiges of love.

Ambition is the spur resuscitates the fevered frame

When physical endurance is approaching breaking point.

That thing beyond one’s outstretched hands

Which greets with chill disdain

All efforts at possession, and would stay apart,

While body agonised and brain unite in tort’rous scheme

And drive one to despair, to grief, to living death unseen.

Unseen by denizens of life’s impenetrable growths;

Those carnivorous animals of civilized domains;

That thick entangling human forest, endless Mardi gras,

Which rushes, whirls, encircles, tourbillonery gyrates.

The furiously ceaseless movement slackens not nor halts

And tortured mind is aggravated, tortured frame insensed,

While one is in a seething mass, lonely but not alone.

Death would appear quite terrorless, and there is far more fear

Attached to life’s illimitable drear uncertainty.

Success is worthless, failure naught, if one has not the will,

(C’est à dire que sa raison d’être est perdue et sa vie

Ne contient que la misère). Initiative is gone;

Uncertainty deposes hope; dismay destroys belief,

And life without respect for one’s own self is valueless.

There rests but one resort at length in willing man’s own hands

And time must come when this reflects no terror in his heart,

For spirit moribund is quite as noxious as dead flesh.

Man’s fear of the hereafter is but born of future hopes

Which, once destroyed, must certainly remove all cowardice,

A coward being one who is afraid of the unknown,

And dying life will always be preferred to living death.

Longmoor, 1948