Slowly the women file to where he
Upright in rimless glasses, silver
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards
Persuade them onwards to his voice
Within whose warm spring rain of l

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their t

The widest prairies have electric
For though old cattle know they mu
Young steers are always scenting p
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the
Leads them to blunder up against t

Continuing to live—that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries—
Is nearly always losing, or going
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and e

At once whatever happened starts r
Panting, and back on board, we lin
With trousers ripped, light wallet
Yes, gone, thank God! Remembering
We toss for half the night, but fi

Standing under the fobbed
Impendent belly of Time
Tell me the truth, I said,
Teach me the way things go.
All the other lads there

The little lives of earth and form
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless:
We hanker for the homeliness

Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes trav
The slow sky all day.
I land to stay here;

That Whitsun, I was late getting
Not till about
One—twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three—quarters—empty train
All windows down, all cushions hot

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.