THE FOOL IN "LEAR"

Mad as a bee or a wild shining bird,
	my only genus is to mock:
I am the sad wasp, and the robin sick
with dancing in the cold; I am the word
that opens, in your dreams, the hideous door;
I am the sex of weather; strip me bare,
	I am the laughing stock.

Down in the horrible mystery, the night
	and granite of the old king's mind,
the grief and writhing cracked across; went blind
and venomous: it was thence that I crept out.
Which of us, in his madness, was the man?
Only my knowledge went to bed at noon, 
	his was the staring wind,

his was the bed in which I left no trace:
	nothing could prove I had been born;
I had gone back.  Yet sometimes he had worn
wrinkles or troubled hair that were my face;
dying himself, it was in me he wrapped
Cordelia, one hour before I slipped
	into the cold again.