alife

A Life
______

Under a grey sky, lashing rain,
on the North Sea, we hove to;
and as my life heaved and dipped
spoke the terse Aldis-lamp
`Who are you?' It bewildered me.
What was I ever? Children are
improvised alchemists, no books closed;
they know the mysteries of magneto and crystal
sets. Life is little more
than an accrual of mysterious years.
So much for my sum; but what will I leave?
My blood perhaps spilled like loose change,
forged papers in my pocket, my face
fixed in stained celluloid on
some private eye's desk; my brimming ideas
hardened and set into a few bright eggs
of Thought, which a curator will polish.
My autograph. "This is his desk,
ladies and gentlemen, just as he left it.
His mug. His pad." Yet when I left
they did not look for me. The monk
shuffled chuckling under the arch;
the debonair duke smiled and caressed
his dull harlot. No Master of Disguises,
I am still here, curled deep inside,
wondering, wondering, at such a kaleidoscope synergy...
I am still sitting in my endless, shabby
railway concourse of a life...