Late in the Day
I
Late in the day,
And little enough, you’ld say –
To have her liking
For my loving?
Late sun on brown
Oak tops, and most leaves down,
And rooks, this bright evening,
Flying to Merton.
Dear, blessed sun,
Shining when the year’s done
On cold limbs caught in
Marvellous autumn.
II
That illusion
Was quickly gone.
That poem, its last leaf.
Year’s end. The end of life.
Day-dreams of age,
Autumnal dotage,
Their wakings bitterer
Than a young man’s ever were.
III
How congruously
The year dies, but for me,
Who still act heyday’s part
With an old heart.
Time it was over.
Sportsman, chairman, lover,
Provider, or what all, –
Unseasonal
As, back on the tree,
These fallen leaves would be.
Before the sap had failed
The aims had failed.
Sons, port your own kit.
Colleagues, you manage it.
Love, quiet in your own
Bed, sleep alone.
IV
It needs ‘honesty and courage
To face the change’ (of age),
Writes Eliot, and seldom a poet
That’s man enough to do it.
Old men, occupationally young,
Lust, rage, with maybe monkeys’
Glands – anything – to provide
Those throbbings of noontide,
Rather than go gentle,
Not beating upon the wall,
Unphallic, unfashionable,
As, I trust, I shall.
V
Where do I turn,
Now old, to learn
Fat Gibbon’s, Hume’s, Voltaire’s
‘Autumnal felicity’
From fears, from cares
That still crowd me?
Away from you
Smooth-browed ones: you
Bedevil much we’ve done;
You breed, plant, look for spring –
But my late sun
Expects no spring.
Proved wisdom looks
To friends, prints, books,
Not progeny. Old ways,
Old rooms, an unleafed wood
Suffice. Short days.
Long solitude.
VI
The heavy head
Welcomes the fall of night
And his familiar bed.
Needs are so small.
Someone to say ‘Goodnight.
Lie long, my love. All’s well.’
Someone to weep.
Tears, like rain at night,
Lull the ghost to sleep.
VII
A toss-up, what’s to come.
All anyone can say
Is that love’s labour’s found
Buried in the ground.
King Solomon’s long home?
Christ’s hibernaculum?
Well, it’s late in the day.
You, that way; we, this way.
Page(s) 70-72
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