III
So in my mind there's not much left of you,
And that disintegrates; but while a few
Patches of memory's mirror still are bright
Nor your reflected image there has quite
Faded and slipped away, it will be well
To search for each surviving syllable
Of voice and body and soul. And some I'll find
Right to my hand, and some tangled and blind
Among the obscure weeds that fill the mind.
A pause....
I plunge my thought's hooked resolute claws
Deep in the turbid past. Like drowned things in the jaws
Of grappling-irons, your features to the verge
Of conscious knowledge one by one emerge.
Can I not make these scattered things unite? ...
I knit my brows and clench my eyelids tight
And focus to a point.... Streams of dark pinkish light
Convolve; and now spasmodically there flit
Clear pictures of you as you used to sit:—
The way you crossed your legs stretched in your chair,
Elbow at rest and tumbler in the air,
Jesting on books and politics and worse,
And still good company when most perverse.
Capricious friend!
Here in this room not long before the end,
Here in this very room six months ago
You poised your foot and joked and chuckled so.
Beyond the window shook the ash-tree bough,
You saw books, pictures, as I see them now,
The sofa then was blue, the telephone
Listened upon the desk, and softly shone
Even as now the fire-irons in the grate,
And the little brass pendulum swung, a seal of fate
Stamping the minutes; and the curtains on window and door
Just moved in the air; and on the dark boards of the floor
These same discreetly-coloured rugs were lying...
And then you never had a thought of dying.