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As for the agony
Clenching in me:
My own and others' imperfection,
Killing delight ...
On those clear pools my own refl ection
Is broken light.
And in that steep stone cleft
What will be left
Of me is not the middling lover
Here, of a wife
With whom he gladly would live over
A second life --
Nor that one who'd begun
A better son,
Friend, father in his own thinking,
Than he became --
So maimed in the doing (heart here sinking)
And yet the same.
Say all these disappear
Into the sheer
Fire of that anger -- what's remaining?
Stranger, the sight,
Say, of the tall slim pale wild oats leaning,
In the late light,