Rise, walk, clutching the walker's rail,
lower myself painfully into the easy chair,
ask for books, writing paper, lunch, in the jail
of myself. Say thank you. Smile. Despair
—pointless, destructive—but oh how
not let it well up, hot corrosive, beyond tears,
though I live—live—in the present, now—
sheer fury against the loss of all
that is vivid, swift, spontaneous, the fall
into acceptance, rape, ruin of the years
that should have been—and pointless to dwell
on—voracious for immortality, mad—the cell.