In the Brattle Cab I realize you're drunk. Arrived, you stab Your front door with a key and stumble in. In his own last battle, he retained the curious objectivity of the observer, the noncombatant. Like them, he had an essentially rationalistic sensibility, and fixed the uneasy, shambling world in the calm and centered forms of his verse. The riddle of the Sphinx.
Man walks on three Legs at the last.
I walk on three, one of Which is a wheeled I.V. pole, when I rise From bed the first time to make my aged way To the toilet . . . The two of us are here. Where the recirculating shaft goes home Into the breast that armed it for the air, And, as we must expect, the art that there Turned our lone hand into imperial Rome Reverts to earth and its inveterate love For the inanimate and its return. Graham Christian is a freelance writer living in Somerville. The Boston Phoenix .