When you were sick they brought up cambric tea.
You sipped. And summers for your running limbs
Lush, blowing grasses grew below
Chirruping birds, stormbleating lambs.
If now you sicken and let memory
Benumb the foregone present with those calms,
Is there no other way?

When the ripe fields had shrunk and unforeseen
Loves truckling to your short temper bowled
You over, and you made big days careen,
Till when you were told 'Kill or be killed'
Your bloodless hands were willing to demean
The substance that the shadow be upheld,
Was there no other way?

Though out of such brawls you steered a steady course,
In every room that flattered your aplomb,
The one shadow thrown pitiless was yours.
A jazzed up frenzy bored your off hours dumb.
Your partner's played-out fervor broke: divorce
Settled the issue and revoked the claim.
Was there no other way?

You slipped your moment of truth because it came
Sudden: as some new confirmand abroad
In the squares and tortured façades of Bernini's Rome
Might, seeing ornate waters everywhere outpoured,
Light with baptismal memories, sham
The more, and sin more thoroughly be restored.
Was there no other way?

And when your mornings rankled on circumstance,
Your evenings on remoteness, geniality
Served as no mask. New men for their main chance
Left your uncomplaining high and dry.
For all the half deeds you look on askance,
You raise no utterance no stronger than a sigh.
Is there no other way?