Goat Song

Seated in a high tower and guarded by beasts,
bewitched and exiled, ²⁰

Were two glittering, loud-talking fairies, ¹⁹

Each in his prison thinking of the key. ²³

What was it like to be a man, condemned to men? ¹⁸

Shall I, wasting in despair die because a woman’s fair? ³⁵

It is the business of goats to climb. ⁸

Can’t change that. ²⁸

What belated queer obsession ³⁶

Can break away from its passionate but fatal embrace? ²⁹

A bee thumps heavily, insistently, against a windowpane. ¹⁵

I want a doomed love. ¹⁶

Why did he leave? ²⁴

Sappho threw herself into the Aegean after being spurned by a lover. ³⁴

I am a eunuch, but for the Kingdom of God’s sake. ³⁷

Look the unseen bade him, ¹

Fate goes ever as fate must. ³

A powerful but capricious dragon, ²⁷

Blind, throbbing between two lives, ²¹

Swooping, swerving, flinging, ⁴

In and out, round and round. ⁴

Did she not wish everybody merely to be themselves? ¹²

She can’t help it. You can’t help it. And there you are. ¹⁷

There is no crime. ¹⁰

Who’s the lucky person that hears the angels whisper? ²

It’s not easy to kill a mountain goat. ⁹

* * *

Quarter Centro

12 December 2006

1. (Mrs. Dalloway p25)

2. (The New Life p95)

3. (Beowulf p 14)

4. (Mrs. Dalloway p69)

8. (Grendel p139)

9. (Grendel p140)

10. (Mrs. Dalloway p24)

12. (Mrs, Dalloway p126)

15. (The Hours p45)

16. (The Hours p135)

17. (Another Country p51)

18. (Another Country p385)

19. (Another Country p 263)

20. (Another Country p173)

21. (The Waste Land, line 218)

23. (The Waste Land, lines 413-414)

24. (Sir John Paper p113)

27. (Sir John Paper p115)

28. (Sir John Paper p115)

29. (Sir John Paper p116)

33. (Reader’s Block p30)

34. (Reader’s Block p35)

35. (Reader’s Block p64)

36. (Reader’s Block p70)

37. (Reader’s Block p75)