(For Caroline Newton)
Abruptly mounting her ramshackle wheel, Fortune has pedalled furiously away;
The sobbing mess is on our hands today.
Those accidental terrors, Famine, Flood, Were never trained to diagnose or heal Nightmares that are intentional and real.
Nor lust nor gravity can preach an aim To minds disordered by a lucid dread Of seeking peace by going off one’s head.
Nor will the living waters whistle; though Diviners cut their throats to prove their claim, The desert remains arid all the same.
If augurs take up flying to fulfill
The doom they prophesy, it must be so; The herons have no modern sign for No.
If nothing can upset but total war The massive fancy of the heathen will That solitude is something you can kill,
If we are right to choose our suffering And be tormented by an Either-Or, The right to fail that is worth dying for,
If so, the sweets of victory are rum: A pride of earthly cities premising The Inner Life as socially the thing,
Where, even to the lawyers, Law is what, For better or for worse, our vows become When no one whom we need is looking, Home
A sort of honour, not a building site, Wherever we are, when, if we chose, we might Be somewhere else, yet trust that we have
chosen right.