—Vasíli, drink your brandy, get some sleep,
Look, we’ve these great pills . . . No; he asks instead,
Anything, anything to keep his head
Above the sucking waves, merely to listen
A little while. So in the hopelessness
Of more directly helping we resume.
Out come cup, notebook, the green-glowing room,
And my worst fear—that, written for the dead,
This poem leave a living reader cold—
But there’s no turning back. The absolute
Discretion of our circle, as of old,
Takes over.