No, this is not my life, thank God...
...worn out like this, and crippled by brain-fag;
Obsessed first by one person, an then
(Almost at once) most horribly besotted by another:
These Februaries, full of draughts and cracks,
Thy belong to the people in the streets, the others
Out there - haberdashers, writers of menus.
Salt breezes! Bolsters from Istanbul!
Barometers, full of contempt, controling moody isobars.
Sumptuous tittle-tattle from a summer crowd
That's fed on lemonades and matinées. And seas
That float themelvs about from place to place, and then
Spend hours - just moving some clear sleets across glass stones.
Yalta; deck-chairs in Asia's gold cake; thrones.
Meanwhile ...I live on...powerful, disobedient,
Inside their draughty haberdasher's climate,
With these people...who are going to obsess me,
Potatoes, dentists, peoples I hardly know, it's unforgiveable
For this is not my life
But theirs, that I am living.
And I wolf, bolt, gulp it down, day after day.
