In Nineteen Twenty-Seven
1
In nineteen twenty-seven, in the spring
And opening summer, dull imagination
Stretched the dollish smile of people.
Behind plate-glass the slant deceptive
Of footwear and bright foreign affairs
Dispelled from consciousness those bunions
By which feet limp and nations farce —
O crippled government of leather —
And for a season (night-flies dust the evening)
Deformed necessity had a greening.
Then, where was I, of this time and my own
A double ripeness and perplexity?
Fresh year of time, desire,
Late year of my age, renunciation —
Ill-mated pair, debating if the window
Is worth leaping out of, and by whom.
If this is ghostly?
And in what living knowledge
Do the dressed skeletons walk upright?
They memorize their doings and lace the year
Into their shoes each morning,
Groping their faulty way,
These citizens of habit, by green and pink
In gardens and smiles in shops and offices;
Are no more real than this.
2
And they are vast preliminaries:
Cohorts of hours marching upon the one
That must reduce and tell them.
Much must pass to be much vain —
Many minor and happy themes
For one unhappy major dissolution.
The calendar and clock have stopped,
But does the year run down in time?
While time goes round? Giddying
With new renewal at each turning?
Thus sooner than it knows narrows
A year a year a year to another.
The season loses count, speeds on.
But I, charmed body of myself,
Am struck with certainty, stop in the street,
Cry " Now" — and in despair seize love,
A short despair, soon over.
For by now all is history.
Do we not live? We live. And love? We love.
But I? But you? We are but we.
A long table lies between us
Of talk and wood.
The best is to go out.
" Unpleasant weather," banks and bakers say,
" But fine weather promised for to-morrow."
To-morrow is when? This question
Turns heaviness of hours into affection:
Home for a place to lean an elbow.
3
Fierce is unhappiness, a living god
Of impeccable cleanliness and costume.
In his intense name I wear
A brighter colour for the year
And with sharp step I praise him
That unteaches ecstasy and fear.
If I am found eating, loving,
Pleasure-making with the citizens,
These are the vigours learned of newspapers:
By such formalities I inhale
The corrupt oxygen of time
And reconstruct a past in which to wait
While the false curve of motion twitches straight.
Love me not less, next to myself
Most unloyal of the citizens,
That I thus worship with
The hourly population.
For by such looseness
I argue you with my tight conscience
And take you for so long, an empty term,
An irony of dearness.
And this is both love and not love,
And what I pledge both true and not true,
Since I am moved to speak by the season,
Bold and shy speed and recession,
Climax and suspension.
4
Had I remained hidden and unmoved,
Who would have carried on this conversation
And at the close remembered the required toast
To the new year and the new deaths?
Oh, let me be choked ceremoniously
With breath and language, if I will,
And make a seemly world of it,
And live, if I will, fingering my fingers
And throwing yesterday in the basket.
I am beset with reasonableness,
Swallow much that I know to be grass,
Tip as earth tips and not from dizziness.
But do not call me false.
What, must I turn shrew
Because I know what I know,
Wipe out the riverfront
Because it stinks of water?
I cannot do what there is not to do.
And what there is to do
Let me do somewhat crookedly,
Lest I speak too plain and everlasting
For such weather-vanes of understanding.
5
Therefore, since all is well,
Come you no nearer than the barrel-organ
That I curse off to the next square
And there love, when I hear it not.
For I have a short, kind temper
And would spare while I can.
While the season fades and lasts
I would be old-fashioned with it.
I would be persuaded it is so,
Go mad to see it run, as it were horses,
Then be unmaddened, find it done,
Summon you close, a memory long gone.
So I am human, of much that is no more
Or never was, and in a moment
(I must hurry) it will be nineteen twenty-eight,
An old eternity pleading refutal.
In nineteen twenty-seven, in the spring
And opening summer, dull imagination
Stretched the dollish smile of people.
Behind plate-glass the slant deceptive
Of footwear and bright foreign affairs
Dispelled from consciousness those bunions
By which feet limp and nations farce —
O crippled government of leather —
And for a season (night-flies dust the evening)
Deformed necessity had a greening.
Then, where was I, of this time and my own
A double ripeness and perplexity?
Fresh year of time, desire,
Late year of my age, renunciation —
Ill-mated pair, debating if the window
Is worth leaping out of, and by whom.
If this is ghostly?
And in what living knowledge
Do the dressed skeletons walk upright?
They memorize their doings and lace the year
Into their shoes each morning,
Groping their faulty way,
These citizens of habit, by green and pink
In gardens and smiles in shops and offices;
Are no more real than this.
2
And they are vast preliminaries:
Cohorts of hours marching upon the one
That must reduce and tell them.
Much must pass to be much vain —
Many minor and happy themes
For one unhappy major dissolution.
The calendar and clock have stopped,
But does the year run down in time?
While time goes round? Giddying
With new renewal at each turning?
Thus sooner than it knows narrows
A year a year a year to another.
The season loses count, speeds on.
But I, charmed body of myself,
Am struck with certainty, stop in the street,
Cry " Now" — and in despair seize love,
A short despair, soon over.
For by now all is history.
Do we not live? We live. And love? We love.
But I? But you? We are but we.
A long table lies between us
Of talk and wood.
The best is to go out.
" Unpleasant weather," banks and bakers say,
" But fine weather promised for to-morrow."
To-morrow is when? This question
Turns heaviness of hours into affection:
Home for a place to lean an elbow.
3
Fierce is unhappiness, a living god
Of impeccable cleanliness and costume.
In his intense name I wear
A brighter colour for the year
And with sharp step I praise him
That unteaches ecstasy and fear.
If I am found eating, loving,
Pleasure-making with the citizens,
These are the vigours learned of newspapers:
By such formalities I inhale
The corrupt oxygen of time
And reconstruct a past in which to wait
While the false curve of motion twitches straight.
Love me not less, next to myself
Most unloyal of the citizens,
That I thus worship with
The hourly population.
For by such looseness
I argue you with my tight conscience
And take you for so long, an empty term,
An irony of dearness.
And this is both love and not love,
And what I pledge both true and not true,
Since I am moved to speak by the season,
Bold and shy speed and recession,
Climax and suspension.
4
Had I remained hidden and unmoved,
Who would have carried on this conversation
And at the close remembered the required toast
To the new year and the new deaths?
Oh, let me be choked ceremoniously
With breath and language, if I will,
And make a seemly world of it,
And live, if I will, fingering my fingers
And throwing yesterday in the basket.
I am beset with reasonableness,
Swallow much that I know to be grass,
Tip as earth tips and not from dizziness.
But do not call me false.
What, must I turn shrew
Because I know what I know,
Wipe out the riverfront
Because it stinks of water?
I cannot do what there is not to do.
And what there is to do
Let me do somewhat crookedly,
Lest I speak too plain and everlasting
For such weather-vanes of understanding.
5
Therefore, since all is well,
Come you no nearer than the barrel-organ
That I curse off to the next square
And there love, when I hear it not.
For I have a short, kind temper
And would spare while I can.
While the season fades and lasts
I would be old-fashioned with it.
I would be persuaded it is so,
Go mad to see it run, as it were horses,
Then be unmaddened, find it done,
Summon you close, a memory long gone.
So I am human, of much that is no more
Or never was, and in a moment
(I must hurry) it will be nineteen twenty-eight,
An old eternity pleading refutal.
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