THE HAUNTED

by Quentin Crisp

Now I am dead; the cold square house is shut.
Where once I used to live and wonder why,
And every dark, uncurtained eye,
Though bleak before, is now a tone more bleak.

Upon the blue-green lawns the starlings strut
Where once I stood and hoped that I might die;
They strut and lance with sudden beak
The blue-green blades that no one comes to cut.

And on the pathways, tended now no more,
The raindrops, gathered on the underside
Of leafless boughs, drip as they dripped before,
And here I walk and wonder why I died.




(also titled "Now I Am Dead," see James Adler's Memento Mori (An AIDS Requiem.)

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Copyright © 1999–2007 by Quentin Crisp and Phillip Ward, from Dusty Answers (forthcoming), Mr. Crisp's final book. All rights reserved.





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