(a `negatively capable` musing)

 

It was almost nonchalantly done.

 

She lurked through the eddies of the crowded room

And moved towards me. We both realised

That it was now the time – the one time –

And never afterwards a time again.

 

I sensed she was behind me, and I felt

Her desolate, enormous helplessness

With such a fierce compulsion that it seemed

My very heart must claw out from my back

And leap the space between us…But, summoning

A strength from some cold fathom of the will,

Garrotted joy…Slowly I turned around

And, nodding casually, turned back again.

And her eyes went out

And she sank and fell away among the crowd.

 

Such is the weird delirium of pride

That I knew an instant`s triumph…Ah, but since?

 

No shunning the knowledge since, I know too well:

I am shrunken capable of hell!