'Ce chien est à moi, disoient ces pauvres enfants;

c'est là ma place au soleil: voilà commencement et

l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre.'

PASCAL, Pensées

Rendezvous for respite here? No way.

Melancholy the shade of gravel and the fountain

Wavering its fleur-de-lys ' imperfect heart.

This world waits for me as if I was myself

Procured, a rare but dim shrub with a Latin

Name, dogsomething dubbed by Linnaeus, say,

And planted on a damp bench between

Leguminosae and Cistacea ; in their case both

Damned to mourn a Mediterranean soil and sky

For life as I mourn love and youth

Unnoticed in my grief by either as they pass,

Arm-in-arm, or pause in front of me to kiss.

What flesh! To be elsewhere if I could for once

Not a guest like this at my own urn-burial,

Cheek the colour of white bread and paste,

Funeral meats, a feast of endless asphodel ahead?

There's life-pulse in the veined leaf yet,

Protest, if not enough to prompt a second look,

To make one stoop and take that tender

Sapiens sapiens label for a wonder (planted in '46!). O,

If we were creatures in a zoo, we would express

Our sadness in pacing round and round. But I

Just sit here staring at my hands, salve not slave,

Or who could bear not to look into my eyes?

Salve to my every grief and conscience?

My heart, this scant bush rocking to and fro,

Winds back upon itself like the wild rose.

But get up and go, you fool, follow your nose,

And have a gander while you can, from

Alp to Tropic, rock to hothouse rim,

And admit pleasure in this imperium?:

Over seas and under other stars than these,

For the time of year, stars that already

Prick the sky with subterranean light

From somewhere long ago, to the South,

Where pithy men I would not like, with all

Their equipage in train, lend everything

They can a name, if possible, their own,

From stick to stone, from sprig to State,

Until there is no other world to legislate.

The reason I come here, to be alone,

Unclassified, and without my maker,

To pursue a poem with pen and paper:

Against the grain, in homage to Anon.