MAKING his advances
He does not look at her, nor
sniff at her,
No,
not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
Only he senses the vulnerable folds
of skin
That work
beneath her while she sprawls along
In her ungainly pace,
Her folds of skin that work and
row
Beneath the
earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.
And so he strains beneath her housey
walls
And catches
her trouser-legs in his beak
Suddenly, or her skinny limb,
And strange and grimly drags at
her
Like a
dog,
Only agelessly
silent, with a reptile’s awful persistency
Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which
he is doomed.
Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation
And doomed to partiality,
partial being,
Ache,
and want of being.
Want,
Self-exposure,
hard humiliation, need to add himself on to
her
Born to walk alone,
Fore-runner,
Now suddenly distracted into
this mazy side-track,
This awkward, harrowing pursuit,
This grim necessity from
within.
Does she know
As she moves eternally slowly
away?
Or is he
driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in
the
dark against a window,
All knowledgeless?
The awful concussion,
And the still more awful need
to persist, to follow, follow,
continue,
Driven, after aeons of pristine,
fore-god-like singleness and
oneness,
At the end of some mysterious,
red-hot iron,
Driven
away from himself into her tracks,
Forced to crash against
her.
Stiff, gallant, irascible,
crook-legged reptile,
Little gentleman,
Sorry plight,
We ought to look the other
way.
Save that, having come with you so
far,
We will go on
to the end.