BEGGAR

Old as a coat on a chair; and his crushed hand,
as inexpressive as a bird's face, held
out like an offering, symbol of the blind,
he gropes our noise for charity.  You could build 
his long-deserted face up out of sand,
	or bear his weakness as a child.

Shuffling the seconds of a drugged watch, he
attends no answer to his rote; for soul's
and body's terrible humility,
stripped year by year a little barer, wills
nothing: he claims no selfhood in his cry:
	his body is an age that feels.

As if a mask, a tattered blanket, should
live for a little before falling, when
the body leaves it: so briefly in his dead
feathers of rags, and rags of body, and in
his crumpled mind, the awful and afraid
	stirs and pretends to be a man.

Earth's degradation and the voice of earth;
colour of earth and clothed in it; his eyes
white pebbles blind with deserts; the long growth
of landscape in his body: as if these
or these dead acres horribly gave birth:
	here will fall from him like disguise.

Only a sad and humble motion keeps
the little space he is, himself: to row
his mindless caves with ritual hand and lips, 
and wonder dimly at his guilt: with no
memory of it now: it was perhaps
	too fearful, or too long ago.

				Giza