An old man sits in a falling‑down rented house, waiting for rain. He never fought in any war. He thinks about faith he has lost, about strangers who whisper in dark rooms, about History as a woman who deceives. Nothing happens. Everything is thought.
James Angleton read this poem at Yale around 1939 and kept it for the rest of his life. He took his most famous phrase from line 65. At his funeral in 1987, mourners heard it read aloud.
How to read it: read slowly, out loud if you can. Tap any underlined word. A dotted line is a hard word; a solid red line is a reference to another text or a place. Line numbers are on the left so you can point to lines in your answers.
dotted = word · solid = reference
Here I am, , Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. I was neither at Nor fought in the warm rain Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a , Bitten by flies, fought. My house is a decayed house, And squats on the window sill, the owner, Spawned in some of Antwerp, in Brussels, patched and peeled in London. The goat coughs at night in the field overhead; Rocks, moss, , iron, . The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea, Sneezes at evening, poking the gutter. I an old man, A dull head among windy spaces.
The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the of the year Came
In May, dogwood and chestnut, , Among whispers; by With caressing hands, at Who walked all night in the next room; By Hakagawa, bowing among the ; By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, An old man in a house Under a windy .
Think now , corridors And , deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by . Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such confusions That the giving the craving. Gives too late What’s not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal a fear. Think Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our crimes. These tears are shaken from .
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in . Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any Of . I would meet you upon this honestly. To lose beauty in terror, terror in . I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be ? I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations the profit of their chilled , Excite the , when the sense has cooled, With sauces, multiply variety In . , Suspend its operations, will the Delay? , whirled Beyond the circuit of In atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy Of , or running on , White feathers in the snow, claims, And an old man driven by To a sleepy corner.
of the house,
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