An Elegy for Tristan Tzara
In the hungry kitchen
The dog sings for its dinner.
...
Evening is part of the jig-saw truth of her,
ply-wood ply-flesh, her insolent reply
blinding the ace with a straight shot to centre,
the woman's a delicate devil in twenty places
...
Far away is one who now is sleeping
In the same world and the same darkness,
But not in my keeping.
Oh no, my arms could never stretch so far
...
Those who love cats which do not even purr
Or which are thin and tired and very old,
Bend down to them in the street and stroke their fur
...
The alabaster legs of the lonely woman
hang from the window like white ensigns
out of the laughing window like false teeth
sheets, flagstaffs, telescopes, rolls of music,
...
See that satan pollarding a tree,
That geometric man straightening a road:
Surely such passions are perverse and odd
...
The sea still plunges where as naked boys
We dared the currents and the racing tides
That stamped red weals of fury on our thighs,
...
In after years, when you look back upon
This time, and upon me, who am no more
Close to your heart nor a shadow in your sun,
...