Whose Number's The Sum Of My Sanity Poem by James Whitworth

Whose number’s the sum of my sanity;
Whose figures first count penitence then burn
Fire-wise the crust of my daily bread;
Whose ear-caught words that fall from mindless mouths
Repeat, reverberate and echo still
In these unpupilled eyes that tutor death.

While the sleepless child in grave-womb dying
Will loose its short-lived light in circled sighs,
Woman, do not despair such gentle deaths
To which all loose-limbed lovers lightly pass,
And harbour rage not in your timid breast,
Where without sentence lie imprisoned words.

To man these ruins of unspoken sound,
I call the sentries from starred turrets down,
That, even if the voice shall never last,
The centred point where we return still stands,
And, wanting in its shade these deathless ghosts,
Be guarded on the backward-side of life.