[BNP/E3, 49A4 – 65]
The day is dark and the rain falls in breaths,
A shallow blackness rests upon our sense,
It is a day that like a vague fog wreathes
A dimness round our chill intelligence.
To-day I cannot hope, sing nor aspire.
All things seem futile that resemble light.
The city’s noise sinks like an ending fire,
And the eyes ache upon the sick day’s affright.
The purpose of all willing, the commotion
That gives life blood of action and belief
Are now appeased, like waves of a great ocean
When the wind fades and festers in rolled grief.
The power to think of action as possible
Sinks. The bright things that compel hopes to hope
In folded flower fashion to-day dwell,
And our void heart no longer weeps nor gropes.
All in my soul takes on the unity
Of omnipresent rain and grey turmoil
Of inward slackness. There comes upon me
The sense of uselessness in all that’s toil.
No, no to-day your voice nor your sweet ways
They have no meaning when this warm rain falls
And seems to make this day to mean all days.
All that now is tires, sickens or appals.
To-morrow, child, to-morrow we can smile.
To-day too many things weigh on my heart:
All my lost efforts, all I was awhile,
All that I had and had soon to depart.
My life to-day resembles a great plain
That caravans no longer cross, a sea
That there’s no reason to sail through again
And so becomes a sterile unity.
No, speak not to me. Not a word: I must
Think of my sorrow, lest I sorrow more.
My head is bowed in the wetted dust
And my soul weeps on the desert shore.
I know all pessimists are right to-day.
All poets that have sung of black despair
Are right this moment of dark rain and sway
For all a supposed future my soul’s air.
My heart – Oh, how again the rain comes down
Into my consciousness with blackened might.
11-9-1915
[65v]
These are sad hours and sometimes I do fear
That, as life grows in me and gathers thought,
It may become ever more like this drear
Wet day that trickles down the walls
Perhaps the meaning of my future self
Will be no gladder substance than this day.
Who Knows? To think I think this, and the pelf
Of hours crumbles in sense in my mind’s
Throw not a word across my silent grief!
Clap no words’ hands before my suffering hour!
All things are difficult now, and even belief
In better days ends like a faded flower.
Yet some hope comes… No it comes not. I force
Out of mere intellect the hope of it,
But all my feelings droop and must perforce
Belong to sadness like a dropping leaf.
Some hope, some day… There are no hopes nor days…
There is to-day, the rain and my despair,
And the loud wetness that with chill dismays
Anoints[1] the empty sickness of the air.
There is no reason to hope, to help, to seek.
There is no force to toil, to dare or act.
The thoughts that now arise are pale and weak
And from their own selves their selves detract.
Oh that the night may come and bury all
And the great modest dim oblivion
Where I may sleep and lose myself and call
No longer on my grief and {…}
Oh for the night, the night that comes and wakes
The street lights and the rest that must touch me,
Oh come, sweet vision whose unseen hand takes
Griefs sight from grief and makes being cease to be.
To correct very much
11-9-1915
[1] Anoints /Afflicts\
