Expose the world, anatomize,

Strip clothes from skin, strip skin, then flesh, from bone.

Himself no surgeon, true, can sterilize,

But yet the self-infection can be shown.

Corrode and doubt; anesthetize the heart;

Morphia or curiosity drown the reviving smart.

Clear as white water in the stream we see

Shadowed the species of eternity;

The working process, self a working part:

For not one necessary fiction’s grace

Can quite make mask th’ observer’s outward face,

Or thought one extra atom’s movement start.

The moving pointer tells, and having told

Not the immediacy of hot and cold,

Nor yet the pale abstraction of a mind

(For algebra and instruments record

No immanent emergence of the Word.)

Tells solid, painful foothold all we find.

Why turn, why seek, why question for an end?

Why hope? Time flows: shows useless to defend

A cosy corner in the rising flood.

The tide is coming in: the dykes are down:

War, Terror, Poverty, swing through the town,

And the cold wind claims to be understood.