Frustration

Round my room I left the midnight chimes top-toeing
and came to find a world that faded as I woke
from sleep's strange things—forgotten.
A day that long had passed
turned back and spoke.

Here in this crater a portrait must be hanging
impaled upon the hour who slipped from bed
to strike again in sleep's old haunted castle
to waken this regretting with a fantasy, and fled.
With a dream my only taper in a cavern
the years whose vaults I tread for that lost day
like waves disturbed and irked by nomad moonlight
but toss in restless sleep and turn away.
Entombed where ghosts of long impeached illusion
leer from the pulp of jetsam time, and moan
clutching here and there at things that vanish
I know at last the past retains its own.

Coldly past my cheek flows sweet Spring breathing.
Chiming tiptoes out my window-wide.
The sober night sends wind to snuff my Candle.
The world spins on in cold and dark outside.

—Clementine.