Whereas I shall wear rags of tarnished grey,
I’ll dress you in gold, and make of you a prince.
Their thousand pleas I fail to obey:
You ask of me, and I obey at once.
Ask of me to stay, and I shall stay.
But if we both must stand, then let us dance;
And if you ask me dress you for one day,
Expect a garnished gold for you, my prince.
For Blair.
Dress me in autumn: and from my once-proud boughs
Drape shrouds of gold. Cut tatters in my robe;
Rip leaves to tassels, unclothe me of my riches;
Expose my trunk and torso to their forms
And see my posture borne to wretched cold.
My colours – my true, my earnest colours – they
Must be dipped in turpentine, so that their dyes
Might run and coalesce, like watermarks
Which blot the oil painting of my summer.
The darks hues run; though my old, knotted legs
Are rheumatoid to stillness and the ague
Of life’s own age. So dress me in this season,
And watch this season wear me to my bones.
Hard to tell whether I was writing in the voice of a tree, an old man, or Treebeard.
From the mound of stones, we sat across the view
Of an entire world on the brink of its last evening.
You observed the city, and what it meant to you:
Already, there were trails of road lights – drawing
A dot-to-dot from here to eternity,
Winking lights which, as they carried on,
And further still, suggested an horizon
Which had only recently become the shape of nuance,
Too distant to be real. Even the sky was cold:
The afterglow of light was now in colour
Only, a spectrum complete in heaven’s tiers
Like iridescence, turned devotional:
Pain-red, cold umber, greens which melted bright,
Up to impossible blue, slumbering above.
All this would soon be night. And having said
Exactly all between us to have said,
We staggered up from the heap of stones we sat upon
And, pulling coats together, walked on to night.
A high, dry blue, like a fine temperament.
All around the sky’s a mural, painted to
Perception. Distant-hung the firmament
Abides the time and day, is waiting to
Announce the moment at its due election,
All tendencies to tend to true perfection.
Palimpsest 