Imaginary People

I: POET You have escaped the comedy Of swift, pretentious praise and blame, And smashed a tavern where they sell The harlots' wine that men call fame. Heralds of reckless solitude Have offered you another voice, But men are still a tempting jest. You roam and cannot make a choice. When you have played distractedly With a humility, you tire And change the pastime to a pride. These are but moods of one desire. You throw an imitating gleam Upon the dwarfs that line your road, Then with a worn hostility You tramp along beneath your load. II: WOMAN To hide your isolation, you become Tame and loquacious, bowing to the men Who bring you ornaments and poverties. Your cryptic melancholy dwindles then, Solved by the distant contrast of your words. Your loneliness, with an amused relief, Sits listening to your volubility And idling with an enervated grief. The play does not begin until you say Your last 'good-night,' for you have only made A swindled fantasy regain its parts. Throughout the night you held an unseen blade Upon your lap and trifled with its hilt, And now you lift it with submissive dread. Should you attack your loneliness and grief Now that they are asleep? You shake your head. III: CHILD Like puffs of smoke inquisitively blown Across the slight transparency of dawn, The births of thought disperse upon your face. A tenuous arrogance, when they have gone, Clings to its tiny wisdom and denies The feeble challenge. Warm emotions swarm Upon the flushed impatience of your face And merge to lordly, evanescent form. New sights bring light oppression to your mind. You struggle with a hunger that transcends The glistening indecisions of your eyes And wins a flitting certainty. Your trends Lead to a fabled turmoil that escapes The stunted messengers of trembling thought. Yet, when your hand for moments closes tight You feel a dagger that your fears have caught. IV: OLD MAN Below your skull a social gathering glows. Weak animosities exchange a last Chat with emotional ambassadors Who honor the importance of your past. You turn your hammock and surrender limbs to sunlight, and increase the hammock's swing As though you suavely bargained with a friend. Its answers are impersonal and bring A tolerance that wounds your lack of strength. A final insurrection cleaves your rest. You raise your back, then lower it convinced That motion now would be a needless test. . . . And with your falling back, the gathering Within your head melts through a door, chagrined, And everything within you dies except A blue and goblin hammock in the wind.