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DEATH IN VENICE
What shall I do with this absurdity,
O heart, O troubled heart?
W.B.Yeats
Do I have to accept
this thing as a part
of me, this
thorn in my heart?
I cannot pull it out
and yet I declare
that the heart is a sense
of direction, and this
goes nowhere.
What can I do?
I look into your smiling eyes
and know that you
do not exist,
cannot exist.
The more I stare at you, the more
you disappear
and the thorn rots, and the heart
cannot be pure,
cannot go
anywhere.
Padraig Pearse, hunted by the wild
pack of his desires, saw death
as the only escape.
But would that not be a little
melodramatic, 'little
lad of the tricks'?