[BNP/E3, 78A – 19]

Delirium.

A Question.

“Tell me,” one day to a poet said

       |A deep, brutal man,|

“If you had to choose between seeing dead —

Your wife whom you do love so well —

And the loss complete, irreparable,

     Of your verses all, instead —

Which loss would you rather feel?”

The poet glanced with sudden woe

And deep distress at him who so

Broke with a question ill‑foreseen

His inner silence half‑serene,

And he did not answer; and the other

Smiled, as elder to younger brother:

The tortured glance of startled sense

And sudden self‑knowledge intense

And newness of self‑consciousness

Was bitter, as ev’n he could guess.

More than a smile were violence.

Alexander Search

January 10^th. 1908.