What's O'Clock/The Watershed
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THE WATERSHED
You say you are my friends,
Coming mistily to greet me in your streets and places,
Handing me roses which are not tinsel surely,
That much is no gainsaying, but there it ends.
For you, the friendly people, are a vision of massed faces,
A large wavering smile of something I shrink to call derision.
And yet I take your roses demurely
And express my obligation with a nice precision.
Why should I quarrel with what Fate sends?
Coming mistily to greet me in your streets and places,
Handing me roses which are not tinsel surely,
That much is no gainsaying, but there it ends.
For you, the friendly people, are a vision of massed faces,
A large wavering smile of something I shrink to call derision.
And yet I take your roses demurely
And express my obligation with a nice precision.
Why should I quarrel with what Fate sends?
Poppycock! For indeed I am not a fool.
Next year, perhaps, I shall be no more to you than a sick mountebank.
Therefore, while I thank you for your roses,
I hold apart and I too smile,
Bitterly, if you will have it so; but while
I wonder you should laud me for a minute,
I wonder more by what strange finger-rule
You find your praise so easy to be spilt—
The brimful ease of it your chief of poses.
Am I the creature you have swiftly built
Since yesterday, who, formerly, for all you thought,
Printed too light a circle even to round a naught?
Or am I what you'll have me by to-morrow?
There's worry to keep me busy dabbling in it,
And pricks enough to start a pretty sorrow.
Next year, perhaps, I shall be no more to you than a sick mountebank.
Therefore, while I thank you for your roses,
I hold apart and I too smile,
Bitterly, if you will have it so; but while
I wonder you should laud me for a minute,
I wonder more by what strange finger-rule
You find your praise so easy to be spilt—
The brimful ease of it your chief of poses.
Am I the creature you have swiftly built
Since yesterday, who, formerly, for all you thought,
Printed too light a circle even to round a naught?
Or am I what you'll have me by to-morrow?
There's worry to keep me busy dabbling in it,
And pricks enough to start a pretty sorrow.
Don't think, you polype blur of friendliness,
That any attitude you choose to take
Affects me otherwise than so much less
Than atom's atom. Scarcely for your sake
Would I consent even to notice where
You seem most thickly to invest the air,
Making a coloured rose-bud of the sun.
Your sneers, I think, would leave me well aware
Of something I might boast a bit of having;
Your smooth and pitiless content with what I do
Shows up each whorl and roughness in the grain
Of that harsh article I call my brain,
Of that queer heart all twisted like a shaving
I seldom fret about. So after being
Encumbered for a brief space by your roses
I think to find your subsequent composure
As apt and cheerful as a new disclosure
Broke suddenly across a weary seeing.
Your waning praise will mark a time of day,
And afternoon approaching finds my way
So far advanced, that's all. You are a stage
We reach at ten o'clock and twelve is age.
If I'm an episode, why so are you.
We'll make a kindliness of that—what else is there to do?
That any attitude you choose to take
Affects me otherwise than so much less
Than atom's atom. Scarcely for your sake
Would I consent even to notice where
You seem most thickly to invest the air,
Making a coloured rose-bud of the sun.
Your sneers, I think, would leave me well aware
Of something I might boast a bit of having;
Your smooth and pitiless content with what I do
Shows up each whorl and roughness in the grain
Of that harsh article I call my brain,
Of that queer heart all twisted like a shaving
I seldom fret about. So after being
Encumbered for a brief space by your roses
I think to find your subsequent composure
As apt and cheerful as a new disclosure
Broke suddenly across a weary seeing.
Your waning praise will mark a time of day,
And afternoon approaching finds my way
So far advanced, that's all. You are a stage
We reach at ten o'clock and twelve is age.
If I'm an episode, why so are you.
We'll make a kindliness of that—what else is there to do?