A Late History

To Herbert Cahoon

Black, under the candlesticks, moving in harness

To a slow music, we hang the sepulchre

And hear the herald angels sing, “He is not here.”

It is mid-November. The first snows

Have fallen silently over the town. I eat

Black pudding at the altar while a dove

Descends from the flaming tower. Later,

Dr. Rashdall, behind whose scholarship

A generation’s knowledge burns, will unmask

Newman. But now it is mid-November.

I eat black pudding and the dove descends.

In a hollow tree by the bridge, an owl awaits.

The moon is full and white. The stars are out.

Tall elms surround the statue of a nymph

Where old Etonians, festive in Norfolk jackets,

Commemorate D. G. Rossetti with a plaque.

I relish the scene, remembering old Watts-Dunton

Boasting, “Dogs have never bitten me!” that day

We talked about Rossetti. Later, attacks of gout,

That horrible baby that looked like Gosse, a wheelchair

Wobbling on toward Trinity, webs covering my eyes.

But tonight the moon is full, and white. Thus 1904 begins.

Of the far end of Marseilles and the islands:

A dwarf climbing where the waves are luminous

With phosphorescent lights, where foam bursts into flower,

And the slow rise and fall of the ocean

Rocks the world. Moving like a crab over the sand,

He murmurs, “We can never praise the beauty of

The world enough, my friend.” Later, death by starvation;

Until the end, swinging on a trapeze for an hour

Every day, longing to be tall. He left

Some wonderful paintings. I walk beside him now

At the far end of Marseilles, toward the islands.

Now, now, if ever, love opening your eyes,

The great blind windows lifted toward the sun, the doors

Thrown open wide. I said to my heart,

Do I wake or sleep?—Soon, soon, these closings start

Where mornings held the garden captive; and early dusk,

Laden with mist and smoke, drift upward from the grass.

The wind dies. The scraping leaves are still. I said to my heart,

Ravaged by darkness, “Now, Soon, and Later have become

Each other—doors all closed, the windows blocked and barred for good—

All and sink down together to the bottom of the sea.

Do I wake or sleep? It is late tonight as it will ever be.”

Copyright Credit: Weldon Kees, “A Late History” from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press. © renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Source: The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (2003)