The clock's untiring fingers wind the wool of darkness
And we all lie alone, having long outgrown our cradles
(Sleep, sleep, Miriam)
And the flames like faded ladies always unheeded simper
And all is troubledness.
Soft the wool, dark the wool
Is gathered slowly, wholly up
Into a ball, all of it.
And yet in the back of the mind, lulled all else,
There is something unsleeping, un-tamperable-with
Something that whines and scampers
And like the ladies in the grate will not sleep nor forget itself,
Clawing at the wool like a kitten.
Sleep, sleep, Miriam.
And as for this animal of yours
He must be cradled also.
That he may not unravel this handiwork of forgetfulness,
That he may not philander with the flames before they die.
The world like a cradle rises and falls
On a wave of confetti and funerals
And sordor and stinks and stupid faces
And the deity making bored grimaces.
Oh what a muddle he has made of the wool,
(God will tomorrow have his hands full),
You must muzzle your beast, you must fasten him
For the whole of life - the interim.
Through the interim we pass
Everyone under an alias
Till they gather the strands of us together
And wind us up for ever and ever.
The clock's fingers wind, wind the wool of Lethe,
(Sleep, sleep, Miriam)
It glides across the floor drawn by hidden fingers
And the beast droops his head
And the fire droops its flounces
And winks a final ogle out of the fading embers
But no one pays attention;
This is too much, the flames say, insulted,
We who were once the world's beauties and now
No one pays attention
No one remembers us.
Thanks to David Higham Associates, representing The MacNeice Estate, for permission to republish here this poem from Collected Poems - Louis MacNeice published by Faber and Faber Ltd.