Or proof of failure, and snobbery her sense of belonging.
The air of tension and coldness in the clinic, that stared
Her individuality into silence and seemed to say
‘All self-expression and spontaneity forbidden’,
Followed her home. In her warm Springtime
t may be that she melted her parents, and even
Came physically close to them - but the pleasure
Of being sure of herself and at ease with others
Was a tale soon told, and soonest forgotten.
8. ‘Donator, dear...’
The eighth dies a different kind of death
From the self mislaid somewhere in Suburbia:
The slow dismantling of pride by indigence
Or that vague sense of social isolation
That scions of the rootless and travellers must feel -
Even though their souls rise vivid as flowers,
Are very hub of the wheel that revolves -
That will revolve.
The donor, deepening his analytical rut,
Lay on the grass outside the Institution,
When a woman and her two small sons -
Travellers in what sense I did not ask -
Sent a ray of hope across the green
That touched my solitude. It was as if
The whole misbegotten world, the shadowy
Tumult of its striving to be, to find the future
In its heart, had shrunk to a request for shekels
From the gentlest and sanest of human futures.