[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 10th. 1908.
