EMPSON, William

Missing Dates

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

It is not the effort nor the failure tires.

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is not your system or clear sight that mills

Down small to the consequence a life requires;

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills

Of young dog blood gave but a month's desires.

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills

Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.

The complete fire is death. From partial fires

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

It is the poems you have lost, the ills

From missing dates, at which the heart expires.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

Aubade

Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake.

My house was on a cliff. The thing could take

Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.

Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

And far too large for my feet to step by.

I hoped that various buildings were brought low.

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed.

The guarded tourist makes the guide the test.

Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No.

Taxi for her and for me healthy rest.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

The language problem but you have to try.

Some solid ground for lying could she show?

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

None of these deaths were her point at all.

The thing was that being woken he would bawl

And finding her not in earshot he would know.

I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie.

Till you have seen what a threat holds below,

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me again about Europe and her pains,

Who’s tortured by the drought, who by the rains.

Glut me with floods where only the swine can row

Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky.

Only the same war on a stronger toe.

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

Tell me more quickly what I lost by this,

Or tell me with less drama what they miss

Who call no die a god for a good throw,

Who say after two aliens had one kiss

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

But as to risings, I can tell you why.

It is on contradiction that they grow.

It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

Up was the heartening and the strong reply.

The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

This Last Pain

This last pain for the damned the Fathers found:

"They knew the bliss with which they were not crowned."

Such, but on earth, let me foretell,

Is all, of heaven or of hell.

Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul,

May know her happiness by eye to hole;

He's safe; the key is lost; he knows

Door will not open, nor hole close.

"What is conceivable can happen too,"

Said Wittgenstein, who had not dreamt of you;

But wisely; if we worked it long

We should forget where it was wrong.

Those thorns are crowns which, woven into knots,

Crackle under and soon boil fool's pots;

And no man's watching, wise and long,

Would ever stare them into song.

Thorns burn to a consistent ash, like man;

A splendid cleanser for the frying-pan:

And those who leap from pan to fire

Should this brave opposite admire.

All those large dreams by which men long live well

Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell;

This then is real, I have implied,

A painted, small, transparent slide.

These the inventive can hand-paint at leisure,

Or most emporia would stock our measure;

And feasting in their dappled shade

We should forget how they were made.

Feign then what's by a decent tact believed,

And act that state is only so conceived,

And build an edifice of form

For house where phantoms may keep warm.

Imagine, then, by miracle, with me,

(Ambiguous gifts, as what gods give must be)

What could not possibly be there,

And learn a style from a despair.