IN PRAISE OF LESSER GODS IV

But yet it's sweet -
remembrance of things long past repair
I have to carry on for the sake of their incomparable sweetness
sweeter than Roses sick with fervent swell
than morose Musicke
more sweet than sweetest smell of rotting cat from neighbours’ lean-to
sweeter than learning strange ways of strangers
sweeter even than carrion comfit, Despair
for strangers we were in the land of Egypt
and strangers we are in this desert
forty years' Lent forsaken

I told: say yes
to hornet nest of years.
Who called, who killed -
that doesn't count.
I cannot be (mute B of ‘doubt’)
but honest with myself
too numb for numbers
and too dumb to do some sums,
to summon an offender to the court,
to swear curtly
and to pledge him guilty
for trying once to add U to the gilt.

I told (myself):
you are not to run away,
you are to stay till the very end
and to look
and to look cool
now everything is at stake
this is your summer school
to acquire any knowledge
that will not leave you an opportunity
to decide again and again that you made a mistake

All the same
I willed it to be (sound B of 'because')
due to my will
being ill as it was
for the lack of its W