[Dichtung]

Lawrence Durrell
On Seeming to Presume
On Seeming to Presume
Where earth and water plan
No place for him, no home
Outside the confining womb,
Mistake him if you can.
The rubber forceps do their job
And here at least stands man.

Refined by no technique
Beyond the great "I will",
in, Confuse the middle ear
Of his tormented dust,
Before the brute can speak
"I will" becomes "I must".

Excluded from the true
Participating love
His conscience takes its due
From this excluding sense
His condemnation brought.
From past to future tense
He mutters on 'I ought'.

He mutters on 'I ought'.

Yet daring to presume
He follows to the stews
His sense of loathsomeness,
Frustration, daily news.
A scholarship in hate
Endows him limb by limb.
"My mother pushed me from behind,
And so I learned to swim."

The bunsen's head of hair,
All fancy free and passion,
Till iron circumstance
Confirms him in his lies,
To walk the Hamlet fashion.
He wrings his hands and cries
"I want to live", but dies.

He wants to live but dies.

Return, return and find
Beneath what bed or table
The lovers first in mind
Composed this poor unstable
Derivative of clay,
By passion or by play,
That bears the human label.

What king or saint could guide
This caliban of gloom
To swaddled in despair
To breathe the factory's air,
Or locked in furnished room
Weep out his threescore there
For seeming to presume,

For seeming to presume?