Pardon my injuries
now that you are old--
Forgive me my awkwardnesses
my impatience
and short replies--
I sometimes detect in your face
a puzzled pity for me
your son--
I have never been close to you
--mostly your own fault;
in that I am like you.
It is as though
you looked down from above
at me--not
with what they would describe
as pride but the same
that is in me: a sort
of shame that the world
should see you as I see you,
a somewhat infantile creature--
without subtlety--
defenseless.
And because you are defenseless
I too, horribly
take advantage of you,
(as you of me)
my mother, keep you
imprisoned--in
the name of protection
when you want so wildly to escape
as I wish also
to escape and leap into chaos
(where Time has
not yet begun)
When Adam died
it came out clearly--
Not what commonly
might have been supposed but
a deamon, fighting for the fire
it needed to breathe
to live again.
A last chance. You
kicked blindly before you
and nearly broke your leg
against the metal--then sank
exhausted.
And that is the horror
of my guilt--and the sweetness
even at this late date
in some kind of acknowledgment
I realize why you wish
to communicate with the dead--
And it is again I
who try to hush you
that you shall not
make a fool of yourself
and have them stare at you
with natural faces--
Trembling, sobbing
and grabbing at the futile hands
till a mind goes sour
watching you--and flies off
sick at the mumbling
from which nothing clearly
is ever spoken--
It not so much frightens
as shames me. I want to protect
you, to spare you the disgrace--
seeing you reach out that way
to self-inflicted emptiness--
As if you were not able
to protect yourself--
and me too--if we did not
have to be so guarded--
Therefore I make this last plea:
Forgive me
I have been a fool--
(and remain a fool)
If you are not already too blind
too deaf, too lost in the past
to know or to care--
I will write a book about you--
making you live (in a book!)
as you still desperately
want to live--
to live always--unforgiving
I'll give you brandy
or wine
whenever I think you need it
(need it!)
because it whips up
your mind and your senses
and brings color to your face
--to enkindle that life
too coarse for the usual,
that sly obscenity
that fertile darkness
in which passion mates--
reflecting
the lightnings of creation--
and the moon--
"C'est la viellesse
inexorable qu'arrive!"
One would think
you would be reconciled with Time
instead of clawing at Him
that way, terrified
in the night--screaming out
unwilling, unappeased
and without shame--
Might He not take
that wasted carcass, crippled
and deforemed, that ruined face
sightless, deafened--
the color gone--––that seems
always listening, watching, waiting
ashamed only
of that single and last
degradation--––
No. Never. Defenseless
still you would keep
every accoutrement
which He has loaned
till it shall be torn from
your grasp, a final grip
from those fingers
which cannot hold a knife
to cut the meat but which
in a hypnotic ecstasy
can so wrench a hand held out
to you that our bones
crack under the unwonted pressure––
-- William Carlos Williams, 1936
–– A dream