Lawrence Durrell
Portfolio
Late seventeenth, a timepiece rusted by dew,
Candles, a folio of sketches where rotting
I almost found you a precarious likeness —
The expert relish of the charcoal stare!
The copies, the deposits, why the very
Undermeaning and intermeaning of your mind,
Everything was there.

Your age too, its preoccupations like ours...
"The cause of death is love though death is all"
Or else: "Freedom resides in choice yet choice
Is only a fatal imprisonment among opposites."
Who told you you were free? What can it mean?
Come, drink! The simple kodak of the hangman's brain
Outstares us as it once outstared your world.
After all. we were not forced to write,
Who bade us heed the inward monitor?

And poetry, you once said, can be a deliverance
And true in many sorts of different sense,
Explicit or else like that awkward stare,
The perfect form of public reticence.