Paths In the Private Country

The memory in need Is the implacable enemy of the creed, Waits and watches its foe The all-clawing frenzy on tip-toe; Quiescent in the instant's repose The thud of flurried gnawing years evoke. The poet in his solitary moments, spoke Those whispered words, memory's secret ear yoke. His wares, his scares, ailments and balms Suddenly at the oasis of his thirst, awoke Transilluminating the hard wad of his private notes, Clutching at the infant's murmurous innocence The clear innocuous dogma of cries; While his immodestly preened notes of travesty Hark back; and the first poem playfully struck Teaches him now too late the laugh, the critic's qualms. Just as the poet had wandered away from childhood, So will the child thwart the unspoilt man And shyly, shyly he turns away from the poet Coming in like a stray camp-follower to brood. For who may ask which the supreme poet The child's sweet ineffable musings disrespect While language etherises meanings proudly sown: The title in two is halved - one the art, one, lone. And the man, memory's ill-begotten infant Lurking round the corner, pranks the urgent moment Or two - then restores the poet to the poem. © T. Wignesan, 1957 - First pub. in "Diskus", University of Frankfurt-am-Main, 1960 (from the collection: Tracks of a Tramp. Kuala Lumpur-Singapore: 1961)