Young Blood

"But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!"

— D'Hermonville's Fabliaux.

He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth

And lay there heavily, while dancing motes

Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams,

And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes

So that they could not open fully. Yet

After some time his blurred mind stumbled back

To its last ragged memory — a room;

Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd

Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink

Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs;

The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice,

Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote;

And then . . . well, they had brought him home it seemed,

Since he awoke in bed — oh, damn the business!

He had not wanted it — the silly jokes,

"One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!"

"You'll get no fun then!" "H-ssh, don't tell that story!

He'll have a wife soon!" — God! the sitting down

To drink till you were sodden! . . .

                             Like great light

She came into his thoughts. That was the worst.

To wallow in the mud like this because

His friends were fools. . . . He was not fit to touch,

To see, oh far, far off, that silver place

Where God stood manifest to man in her. . . .

Fouling himself. . . . One thing he brought to her,

At least. He had been clean; had taken it

A kind of point of honor from the first . . .

Others might do it . . . but he didn't care

For those things. . . .

                 Suddenly his vision cleared.

And something seemed to grow within his mind. . . .

Something was wrong — the color of the wall —

The queer shape of the bedposts — everything

Was changed, somehow . . . his room. Was this his room?

. . . He turned his head — and saw beside him there

The sagging body's slope, the paint-smeared face,

And the loose, open mouth, lax and awry,

The breasts, the bleached and brittle hair . . . these things.

. . . As if all Hell were crushed to one bright line

Of lightning for a moment. Then he sank,

Prone beneath an intolerable weight.

And bitter loathing crept up all his limbs.