These Consolations

I SHALL console myself by being absurd And sit among the rank, unwholesome dews, And watch each whining pheasant and each bird Guzzle the very-human bearded grain: I shall not weep beneath the dismal yews But to the milk-white turtles tune my pain. Where spiny pines diffuse a noxious shade I’ll wage a series of intestine wars, The listening wolves grow milder in the glade Beneath the incense of the breathing Spring, Whilst every shepherd polishes his sores I’ll languish into life, and living, sing. The women teem their babes; the sative plants Quiver as Cynthia fills her silver horn, The spicy forest and her sycophants, The fiery-pointed organons of sense, Attempt to catch the sound as it is born And, as it dies, the hush is thick and tense. But even so the tensity can vex What I had hoped had blackened into jet, Like raven-feathers in the moon’s reflex, The feeble eyes of our aspiring thoughts, But even so the tensity can fret, And I must grope in unsuspected orts.... I shall console myself with being fed On hollow sapless tales and other slips, And to the pallid nations of the dead I’ll wander, and as soon as I arise A liquid film will glaze upon my lips, Upon my pores, impatient for the skies.