Once I understood the little fire, When I was a smith, half blind with smoke of dreams, Once too I understood the little streams, When I was a rivergod, Dipped in the sunny midday mire. The foreign singer once I understood, And in the time of leaves—the mad beggar and his woman,— The hideous lovely English governesses In their corners like dry briers in the winter wood, These too I understood, When I was human. Now there bides in me Such a pillar of pain, A death, rigidity, forgetting and forgot, I do not know at all what you may be. The world is salt, ice, brass, The world is the wife of Lot. It is a pillar, since it looked back again At my Sodom and Gomorrah. |