The Uncertain Land and Other Poems by Patrick O'Brian

Author:Patrick O'Brian [O’Brian, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2019-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

Dead hours of louring justification, a desert of time

With ash on your love

you are dying in little

with grey ash on your

love, you fool.

Myself a young man read a poem

I was young and read a poem

Timor mortis conturbat me;

The first real mortal knowledge, understanding

how deep it bit, the biting

surety of coming death for me.

Death for others – theoretic. By all means death for them

the natural order, death for them

the old and barely human.

Death-bed, ‘fell asleep’, the service

orderly and regular

and quite unreal.

This

changed suddenly to waiting

a trapped and hopeless waiting.

From a to x (an x with limits)

a shining dot, the present figured,

rushing on to x’s zone

the length or shortness relative

and almost unimportant now.

Waiting in a waiting room.

With years it darkened

twice the number, square the sum

twice the loss, a double waiting.

the x’s do not coincide.

Death to break us from each other

holding, holding to our love

Death by night, death in the morning

Death tomorrow in the sun.

I wished I had not read the poem

the face had been the same, but so

I wished I had not read the poem.

Now with years, and death much nearer

its power has gone. gone

diminished, dwindled, far receded

A true proportion?

is it?

to grip the present, live it

not smash your head against the wall?

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