Black Kief and the Intellectual
I shall fill up that pit inside me
With my gloomiest thoughts; and then
Spread myself, prostrate, inert, on top of them.
Ah, miserable at last! Felicity.
Those who drink the sea with its fishy breath
Cannot know with what dread I gorge to death
On ideologies — bitter dogma, dialectic, creed;
H.P. sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise, chutney,
Filthy kitchen work that swindles, that says 'feed',
Dried-up certitude, monkish inhibition, duty,
That helps us to fall downhill, mad as swine.
There, alone, I see my obligation. But let me begin
By describing my tiredness . . . a word on my depression.
Copyright Credit: Rosemary Tonks, "Black Kief and the Intellectual" from Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems. Copyright © 2014 by Rosemary Tonks. Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd.
Source: Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books Ltd., 2014)