Trilce LXV

Mother, tomorrow I'm going

to Santiago, to steep myself in your blessing

and your lament. I am arranging

my disillusions and the flush

on the wound of all my false to-ing and fro-ing.

Waiting for me,

there will be your arch of surprise, the shorn

columns of your disquietudes will arise

that bring life to its bourne. Waiting, the patio's there,

the downstair corridor with its round

mouldings and festive borders.

Waiting for me will be my tutor chair-

good and bulky and large-of-jaw,

a piece in dynastic leather

which stops any more

groanmoaning at the buttocks as great-great-grandsons

shift from one thong to another.

Iam sifting my purest affections. I am windlassing-

can't you hear

the plummet heaving, the irregular

chopping of reveille sounds?

Iam moulding your formula of love

for every hollow of this ground.

Oh, if the tacit wheels

would dispose themselves for all

the most distant belts,

for whatever encounters may befall.

CHARLES TOMLINSON + HENRY GIFFORD

So, dead immortal. So.

Under the double arches of your blood

where one must pass so much on tiptoe

that even my father, to go that way

humbled himself to less than half a man to be

the first little one you had.

So, dead immortal.

Between the colonnade of your bones which cannot fall

even in weeping, and in whose side

even Destiny cannot

slide one of his fingers.

So dead immortal.

So.