Isabella In the darkness before the dawn Still I wandered through the vacant streets Of a city I had known. And I came, Isabella, to your door And asked that I might soothe My heart and limbs in cushions on your floor, Damp and sore as were my feet. I did not ask for more. And you, Isabella, whom I had known, Would not hear my voice alone, Would not answer to my rap, Would not care about the drizzle, Freezing on my hair. Shut out by you and by myself I squeezed me into a dusty doorway Meagrely sheltering the chill night. In all the cells about me, all men sleep. Only I lurk and start about the gutters And pavements, awry, unshaved, amiss. Like Edgar in my storm A stranger to these walls And to myself. Of aircraft in their usual preoccupied trajectory Not one flutters through the icy clouds. Pegasus and Polaris, on whom I wont to stare, Hid from me now are, Bellatrix and Capella, In the cold mist that has extinguished all the city But a dull red sign that inflames the fog in a pustule of glare. In this long night, Isabella, my feet walk On stairs we climbed together once; Stride carefully on the dark wet slopes Of a park where we held hands once And kissed in the sunshine; Rest on a flagged courtyard Where we gazed together on a splendid city Bright with clear lights, Now dark and strewn with October’s red leaves And rain trickling in the chinks of stone In the darkness before the dawn. Isabella. A sour dawn will break, Isabella, And grudge these rocks a smear of light. Though an ageing star stare fixedly On the ruins and broken structures Of all the faery buildings I would have shaped: And the fragile cloudshine tiptoe on The fallen struts and pillars of my dreams: And the final morning gaze in silence On the half-completed scene: I will survey my view in the diluted light And absorb ironies with evident indifference. Like one forgotten on a distant star I will traverse these barren plains And eke my comfort on its neutral sands. krm