Стихи и эссе

     converse. Linnaeus recoiled from the Amphibia
     as a naked gruesome rabble,
     Arachnids give me the shudders, but fools
     who deface their emblem of guilt

     are germane to Hitler: the race of spiders
     shall be allowed their webs. I should like
     to be to my water-brethren as a spell
     of fine weather: Many are stupid,

     and some, maybe, are heartless, but who is not
     vulnerable, easy to scare,
     and jealous of his privacy? (I am glad
     the blackbird, for instance, cannot

     tell if I'm talking English, German or
     just typewriting: that what he utters
     I may enjoy as an alien rigmarole.) I ought
     to outlast the limber dragonflies

     as the muscle-bound firs are certainly
     going to outlast me: I shall not end
     down any oesophagus, though I may succumb
     to a filter-passing predator,

     shall, anyhow, stop eating, surrender my smidge
     of nitrogen to the World Fund
     with a drawn-out Oh (unless at the nod
     of some jittery commander

     I be translated in a nano-second
     to a c.c. of poisonous nothing
     in a giga-death). Should conventional
     blunderbuss war and its routiers

     invest my bailiwick, I shall of course
     assume the submissive posture:
     but men are not wolves and it probably
     won't help. Territory, status,

     and love, sing all the birds, are what matter:
     what I dared not hope or fight for
     is, in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft
     where I needn't, ever, be at home to

     those I am not at home with, not a cradle,
     a magic Eden without clocks,
     and not a windowless grave, but a place
     I may go both in and out of.

1962

The Common Life

(for Chester Kallman)

     A living-room, the catholic area you
     (Thou, rather) and I may enter
     without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts
     each visitor with a style,

     a secular faith: he compares its dogmas
     with his, and decides whether
     he would like to see more of us. (Spotless rooms
     where nothing's left lying about

     chill me, so do cups used for ash-trays or smeared
     with lip-stick: the homes I warm to,
     though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling
     of bills being promptly settled

     with cheques that don't bounce.) There's no We at an instant,
     only Thou and I, two regions
     of protestant being which nowhere overlap:
     a room is too small, therefore,

     if its occupants cannot forget at will
     that they are not alone, too big
     if it gives them any excuse in a quarrel