Uncle Giles (final stanza) is the lifelong ne'er do well in Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time,' living in boarding houses and low cost hotels.
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(Jeremias xvii, 9)
That child you loved and lost is gone; let go!
A woman grown and fifteen years
Adrift, her teen-formed status quo,
Life-fashioned in my lack, if met would be
Inscrutable, like runes without a key;
More so, for loss-hurt with an ice-crabbed soul
Through years of exile, craving signs,
I soured like late-frost vines
And loves and friendships with a glare made foul,
And now in age, hugging my broken spears,
I creep a bankrupt, rich in tears.
And should we meet, with pre-judged frowns, we’d find
That even hot-veined blood, gone crank,
No longer linked, that we, once kind,
Now, truth to tell, were dead, each prey to each;
For all that’s felt decays, this pith to teach,
That love’s icon is but a thing of straw,
Mere memory which frays to chaff,
Till lost in baffled wrath
There’s no recall of what she said or wore,
Only self-scorn that, lulled, I stooped and drank
And thus exposed a soft-flesh flank.
Well, folk but decades past knew all of loss,
Of childhood deaths and fever’s fire,
Or sent their children, still in gloss,
To trade or service come eleven years;
And so for me: that child may give me heirs
But I’d not want to hear she’s court and wed
As afterthought once all was done,
For families I shun –
Their close talk, cohort-cleave and common bread:
Like Uncle Giles in rooms and shab attire
I’ll bide my days and stack my pyre.
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© March 2016
