[BNP/E3, 78 – 74-77]
Agony
Song of the Leper.
He was a nauseous leper
Who in the ruins was;
There ever and anon
The hollow wind did pass,
And wild and feeble and yellow all
Was the grass.
And the leper sang this song:
«The leper is excluded from his race,
The leper is driven out,
The leper is thrust out
From hall and street and way;
He must not show his face
Where human beings may.
For him there are whips and stones;
He cannot even stay
Where mongrels fight for bones
And are allowed to play.
[75r]
Song of the Leper – 2.
“No beast as the poor leper is
Worms and snakes have greater bliss.
But the leper is accurst
And he knows that well accurst
Is he because a nauseous leper,
Of evil things the worst.
“The toad, the newt, the viper
Are tolerate and borne,
But the vile and nauseous leper
Makes vomit in deep scorn;
Repugnance is for him
Inevitably born
“Sometimes he hears the laughter
Of human feast to come,
And music |followed after|
By sounds of peace and of home.
Upon the wind they stray,
The wind bears them away,
And the nauseous leper, he remains,
Through night, through day,
Alone with his sores, with his pains.
[76r]
Song of the Leper – 3.
“And bands of strollers pass,
Taking the road afar,
For in the ruins they know well
The leper's sores there are.
And if perchance they see
The leper from their way,
He sees their finger point
And he knows that they say:
“He is the nauseous leper
Who in the ruins doth sit;
He is viler than the plague,
More loathsome far than it;
If near to him we dared do come
Upon him we would spit.”
“Poor leper who is a man,
Poor leper who is alive,
Under his being's ban,
Whose torture's chain unearned
No pity comes to rive.
“A Hand of Might created
[77r]
Song of the Leper – 4 –
|The newt, the toad, the viper,
But gave them not its worst;
Kept them from loneliness,
Gave them their kindred's bliss.
But that hand made the leper
And it made the leper leper:
And that Hand Almighty is
Of all things the most curst.|
Alexander Search.
October 25th 1907.
And when I hear the leper
Sing his song to the wind
I ask — this nauseous leper
What Law of the □ kind
Makes necessary to |*make smart|
Why is this leper a part
Of the system of the World?
God’s damned hand.
_____________________________________________
Marginalia
(2.)
Too bitter for pure song,
My life has marred my verse
And made poet in me wrong
And the critic in me worse.
_______
My life has wasted been
Not even in poetry
Grew it beautiful or serene…
My life was bounded to be
_______
The same in every way
Born spoilt, God’s blended a spite…
Thus {…} has been my day
I hope naught of[1] the night…
_______
[1] of /from\
