The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad

The time of year has grown indifferent.

Mildew of summer and the deepening snow

Are both alike in the routine I know:

I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices

Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,

Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls

The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian . . .

Perhaps if summer ever came to rest

And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed

Through days like oceans in obsidian

Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze;

Perhaps, if winter once could penetrate

Through all its purples to the final slate,

Persisting bleakly in an icy haze;

One might in turn become less diffident,

Out of such mildew plucking neater mould

And spouting new orations of the cold.

One might. One might. But time will not relent.