[BNP/E3, 49A1 – 43]

8/6/07.

When I write verses do I write or rare?

This dreadful light to me at times doth care

And never heart nor brain nor woe can pain

Thus was my heart when this thought there was home.

How do I know, being mad, even the slave

Of mad impulses of unconsciousness,

That while my thought is longing in its grave

Another thing takes not its form and dress?

O torture, torture! Horrible to feel

Dreadful, impossible to dispel

Like the obsession of a senseless word

‘Tis dreadful to feel madness and to know

Like some desires that in mad mind arise,

Grotesquely, inconceivably[1] absurd

[43v]

I dreamed to-day of a stupendous isle

Which a colossal sea of {…} lock

Along its † shore for many a smile

Binds of abhorred {…} and shapes unknown did flock.

The {…} trees had ever a personal smile

And many a hours feeling was a rock

And plants of such a shape sense did re-vile[2]

That at this sight, fear killed us with shock

That seen fear had killed men with a shock.

_______

Everything there matter and soul composed

There was a soil that seems disgraced

And as huge fear these was same that was a word

All things with meanness horror the soul used

It was a world half-look to time and space

Grotesquely and abnormally absurd.[3]

9/6/07 

 
[1] inconceivably /and abnormally\
[2] re-vile /beguile\
[3] It was a world half-look /whole-look\/fear-look\ to time and space /form and trace\

Grotesquely and abnormally /abnormally\ absurd.