<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</SPAN></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">FINALITIES</h2>
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<h3>I</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">PRETEND that night is grandiose,</div>
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<div class="verse">That stars win graves in every ditch;</div>
<div class="verse">Pretend that moonlight is verbose</div>
<div class="verse">And affable, like some grande-mère,</div>
<div class="verse">And men will say that your despair</div>
<div class="verse">Seduces luminous conceits,</div>
<div class="verse">Or call you an anaemic fool</div>
<div class="verse">Who stuffs himself with curdled sweets.</div>
<div class="verse">Thus sentenced to obscurity,</div>
<div class="verse">You can find more turbulent lips</div>
<div class="verse">And spaciously retreat from men</div>
<div class="verse">Immersed in pedestals and whips.</div>
<div class="verse">Amusedly, you can say that stars</div>
<div class="verse">Are wizened jests on every ditch;</div>
<div class="verse">That moonlight is a trick that jars</div>
<div class="verse">Your mind intent on other minds.</div>
<div class="verse">Having agreed upon your station,</div>
<div class="verse">Men will no longer heed your words,</div>
<div class="verse">And with a galloping elation</div>
<div class="verse">You can contradict yourself in peace.</div>
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<h3>II</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">T</span>HE wary perturbations of convinced</div>
<div class="verse">And secretly disdainful men are mild</div>
<div class="verse">And deftly tepid to the ears of one</div>
<div class="verse">Who entertains a careless, ungloved child.</div>
<div class="verse">Above the sprightly idleness of plates</div>
<div class="verse">Men sit and feign industrious respect,</div>
<div class="verse">With eye-brows often slightly ill at ease—</div>
<div class="verse">Cats in an argument are more erect.</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</SPAN></span>
<div class="verse">At last the tactful lustres of farewells</div>
<div class="verse">Are traded: each man strolls off and forgets</div>
<div class="verse">The other—not a frill is disarranged.</div>
<div class="verse">The tension dexterously avoids regrets.</div>
<div class="verse">Two men have unveiled carved finalities</div>
<div class="verse">And made apologies for the event,</div>
<div class="verse">With voices well-acquainted with a task</div>
<div class="verse">Devoid of nakedness and ornament.</div>
<div class="verse">And each man might have murmured, “Yes, I know</div>
<div class="verse">What you will say and what I shall reply,”</div>
<div class="verse">And each man might have watched the other man</div>
<div class="verse">Smile helplessly into his mutton-pie.</div>
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<h3>III</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">T</span>HIS farcical clock is copying</div>
<div class="verse">A wood-chopper with nimble poise,</div>
<div class="verse">While Time, with still and fluid strides,</div>
<div class="verse">Perplexedly listens to the noise.</div>
<div class="verse">The room that holds this joke is filled</div>
<div class="verse">With the relaxed complacencies</div>
<div class="verse">Of poets hiding from themselves</div>
<div class="verse">With measured trivialities.</div>
<div class="verse">But one among them walks about</div>
<div class="verse">And watches with embarrassed eyes.</div>
<div class="verse">The others do not speak to him:</div>
<div class="verse">His nudeness is a tight disguise.</div>
<div class="verse">This fool is anxious to display</div>
<div class="verse">Interrogations of his mind</div>
<div class="verse">To poets who at work and play</div>
<div class="verse">Are isolated from their kind.</div>
<div class="verse">Reluctantly he finds his room,</div>
<div class="verse">Sits on the floor, with legs tucked in,</div>
<div class="verse">And grins up at another clock</div>
<div class="verse">Aloofly measuring its din.</div>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>IV</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">W</span>HEN you are tired of ogling moltenly,</div>
<div class="verse">Your undertones explosively confess.</div>
<div class="verse">A shop-girl coughing over her cigarette</div>
<div class="verse">Expresses the burlesque of your distress.</div>
<div class="verse">Take your cocaine. It leaves a blistering stain,</div>
<div class="verse">But phantom diamonds are immune from greed.</div>
<div class="verse">You pluck them from the buttons of your vest,</div>
<div class="verse">Wildly apologising for your need.</div>
<div class="verse">Take more. Redress the thinness of your neck</div>
<div class="verse">With diamonds; entertain them with your breast;</div>
<div class="verse">Cajole them on the floor with fingertips</div>
<div class="verse">That cannot pause, dipped in a demon’s zest.</div>
<div class="verse">If you had not relented to a man</div>
<div class="verse">Who meddled with your face and stole your clothes,</div>
<div class="verse">Your shrill creative pleasures might be still</div>
<div class="verse">Incarcerated in the usual pose.</div>
<div class="verse">Hysteria shot its fist against your face</div>
<div class="verse">One day, and left the blood-spot of your mouth,</div>
<div class="verse">But when the morning strikes you there will be</div>
<div class="verse">More than hysteria in your answering shout.</div>
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<h3>V</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">L</span>AUGHTER is a skeleton’s applause:</div>
<div class="verse">Grief sells increase to sterility:</div>
<div class="verse">Happiness protects its subtle flaws.</div>
<div class="verse">These three significances make</div>
<div class="verse">The part of you that men can see,</div>
<div class="verse">As you recline upon this bed,</div>
<div class="verse">Your hand defending one bare knee,</div>
<div class="verse">Your shoulders trapped upon the quilt.</div>
<div class="verse">But under the warm sophistry</div>
<div class="verse">That turns your flesh, another form</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</SPAN></span>
<div class="verse">Abstractly bellicose and free</div>
<div class="verse">Attacks the answer of your blood.</div>
<div class="verse">Freedom is the lowest note</div>
<div class="verse">Of slavery, and slavery</div>
<div class="verse">The lowest freedom—you can feel</div>
<div class="verse">The charm of your servility.</div>
<div class="verse">True, you were once a chamber-maid</div>
<div class="verse">Who won a thief and spoke to grief,</div>
<div class="verse">And now your limbs have numbly strayed.</div>
<div class="verse">Are these not harmless travesties?</div>
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<h3>VI</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">S</span>NOBS have pockets into which</div>
<div class="verse">They crowd too many trinkets.</div>
<div class="verse">You feel this, talking to the rich</div>
<div class="verse">And lightly bulging mountebank.</div>
<div class="verse">Untie the knots that close your bag</div>
<div class="verse">And tempt him with a creed or need.</div>
<div class="verse">Be as loquacious as a hag</div>
<div class="verse">Who loves the details of her wares.</div>
<div class="verse">There is a relish when you speak</div>
<div class="verse">To one who cannot understand:</div>
<div class="verse">You celebrate upon a peak</div>
<div class="verse">And prod his helpless effigy.</div>
<div class="verse">This is an unimportant game</div>
<div class="verse">To men evading holidays,</div>
<div class="verse">But introspection becomes tame</div>
<div class="verse">Unless it compliments itself.</div>
<div class="verse">The lightly bulging mountebank</div>
<div class="verse">Is but an interval in which</div>
<div class="verse">You take your garments off and thank</div>
<div class="verse">The privacy that he bestows.</div>
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<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</SPAN></span></p>
<h3>VII</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">L</span>IKE other men you fly from adjectives.</div>
<div class="verse">The plain terseness that lives in verbs and nouns</div>
<div class="verse">Creates a panorama where you know</div>
<div class="verse">That men are not a cloud of romping clowns.</div>
<div class="verse">You greet the wideness of eternal curves</div>
<div class="verse">Where beauty, death and silence give their height</div>
<div class="verse">To those rare men who do not play with thought.</div>
<div class="verse">But this fruit-peddler decorates his fright</div>
<div class="verse">And polishes his peaches and his grapes</div>
<div class="verse">Insanely. If his mercenary hopes</div>
<div class="verse">Were bolder he would be a nimble poet.</div>
<div class="verse">Slight in her bridal gown, his mind elopes</div>
<div class="verse">With adjectives that find her incomplete:</div>
<div class="verse">Your mind is hard and massively parades</div>
<div class="verse">Across the earth with Homer and Villon.</div>
<div class="verse">Since each of you with common sense evades</div>
<div class="verse">Monotony, I join you and refuse</div>
<div class="verse">To call you dwarf or giant. Let the fools</div>
<div class="verse">Who criticise you bind you with these names</div>
<div class="verse">And separate your dead bones with their rules!</div>
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<div class="stanza">
<h3>VIII</h3></div>
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<div class="verse"><span class="giant">D</span>EAD men sit down beside the telephones</div>
<div class="verse">Within your brain and carefully relate</div>
<div class="verse">Decisions and discretions of the past,</div>
<div class="verse">Convinced that they will not deteriorate.</div>
<div class="verse">But you have not their certainty: you try</div>
<div class="verse">A question now and then that cautiously</div>
<div class="verse">Assaults their whispered indolence until</div>
<div class="verse">Their sharp words once more force you to agree.</div>
<div class="verse">Then you insist that certain living men</div>
<div class="verse">Whose tones are half-discreet may be allowed</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</SPAN></span>
<div class="verse">To greet their masters through the telephones,</div>
<div class="verse">Provided that their words are not too loud.</div>
<div class="verse">The new men imperceptibly entice</div>
<div class="verse">Their elders, and a compromise is made,</div>
<div class="verse">Both sides discovering that two or three</div>
<div class="verse">Excluded men must be correctly flayed.</div>
<div class="verse">And so the matter ends; conservative</div>
<div class="verse">And radical revise their family-tree,</div>
<div class="verse">While you report this happening with relief</div>
<div class="verse">To liberals and victorious cups of tea.</div>
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