Red cliffs arise. And up them service liftsSoar with the groceries to silver heights.Lissenden Mansions. And my memory siftsLilies from lily-like electric lightsAnd Irish stew smells from the smell of pramsAnd roar of seas from roar of London trams.
Out of it all my memory carves the quietOf that dark privet hedge where pleasures breed,There first, intent upon its leafy diet,I watched the looping caterpillar feedAnd saw it hanging in a gummy frothTill, weeks on, from the chrysalis burst the moth.
I see black oak twigs outlined on the sky,Red squirrels on the Burdett-Coutts estate.I ask my nurse the question "Will I die?"As bells from sad St. Anne's ring out so late,"And if I do die, will I go to Heaven?"Highgate at eventide. Nineteen-eleven.
"You will. I won't." From that cheap nursery-maid,Sadist and puritan as now I see,I first learned what it was to be afraid,Forcibly fed when sprawled across her kneeLock'd into cupboards, left alone all day,"World without end." What fearsome words to pray.
"World without end." It was not what she'ld doThat frightened me so much as did her fearAnd guilt at endlessness. I caught them too,Hating to think of sphere succeeding sphereInto eternity and God's dread will.I caught her terror then. I have it still.
