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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
HOMUNCULUS IN PENUMBRA, by GORDON BOTTOMLEY Poet's Biography First Line: When I look down my limbs and moving breast Last Line: "until dissemination is complete." Subject(s): Death; Dead, The | |||
"WHEN I look down my limbs and moving breast I know that on a day these will commence To contradict my being that bids them be And sets the harmony by which they live. I love to cleanse them; they reply to me, Exuding, sloughing, duteously renewing, For cleansing is the nature of their growth; Yet in that day they shall deny my will, And turn to filth, refuse, and dirty water, While a dispersing sentience that was I Stands close thereby in trouble, in travail With words those lips delay to utter in time, In awe-full agony lest that flesh dissolve Before I can get into it again. "And when I see it buried I shall cry out: If it is given to fire I shall have throes Of suffering, of unbearable regret, Longing, apprehension, that shall bind Yet, yet a little while the loosening wreaths Of sentience that are continent of me: Then shame and dread shall be the heart of me Because I have no body to hide my thoughts, That are being scanned, as if by unseen eyes, Pursued and judged, ineluctably judged, I shivering in that exposury To estimation, to distinguishing Reproach and sympathy unbearable, Until dissemination is complete." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY NOTE TO REALITY by TONY HOAGLAND |
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