Impasse
I cannot say I am without thought
or fear or memory
of plans made at midnights
between the curtained darknesses.
I would not lie if I
told you the abstract
is nothing to me;
but it would be
death or otherwise grim pain
to live as I do now
because my life is small,
is weary of itself, hates its confines
which it gestures round.
But I am losing hold,
no more the vigor of race—
my brutality
wanders spasmodically
from place to place,
my eyes—rest nowhere—
the will without meaning,
without point, without the vein’s
full flood to carry me
or the inspired chorus shake me
to the act.