WHILE THERE'S STILL TIME
While there’s still time to make dispositions
I want it put about that when I come back
it won’t be, as you might have been supposing,
as a cat or a capybara. No: I shall return
in the form of a nut-brown silver-banded
bassoon. If I’m in the care
of a woman with good lungs and long smooth arms
so much the better. I’m certain she’ll let nothing
stand in the way of her playing me
for a series of solo recitals on the tarmac triangle
at the crook of Kentish Road where the lorries
used to wait for the great gates of the Carriage Works
to open and let them through. Make no mistake:
my voice will be heard once again,
and as never before.
1941
Too early in his career for Merleau-Ponty
to have appeared on the syllabus of Wattville Road
Junior Elementary School as I was leaving it
with the bomb-blasted windows hanging loose
and the useful part of my education completed
And in any case French Thought
stood not a chance so soon after the Fall.
A matter of waiting a few years maybe
for English Blake to uncoil again.
While there’s still time to make dispositions
I want it put about that when I come back
it won’t be, as you might have been supposing,
as a cat or a capybara. No: I shall return
in the form of a nut-brown silver-banded
bassoon. If I’m in the care
of a woman with good lungs and long smooth arms
so much the better. I’m certain she’ll let nothing
stand in the way of her playing me
for a series of solo recitals on the tarmac triangle
at the crook of Kentish Road where the lorries
used to wait for the great gates of the Carriage Works
to open and let them through. Make no mistake:
my voice will be heard once again,
and as never before.
1941
Too early in his career for Merleau-Ponty
to have appeared on the syllabus of Wattville Road
Junior Elementary School as I was leaving it
with the bomb-blasted windows hanging loose
and the useful part of my education completed
And in any case French Thought
stood not a chance so soon after the Fall.
A matter of waiting a few years maybe
for English Blake to uncoil again.