Jean Rhys

It’s now within

an hour of sundown of a late

November afternoon.

It was a beautiful day,

the cold burned

down any indignation.

What won’t degrade:

the sick and distant, or near and black,

bad-natured tides of want.

Jean Rhys is saying

If  I could jump out of the window

one bang and I’d be out of  it.

It isn’t done

to admit to this kind

of  need,

but spirit needs a house,

and the brief pageant of  being

escorted through

the grieving joy of words

set down right. The cold bores her,

oppresses her. Life

comes to bore her. She can strip

a thing down. I want

beauty, she adds. Hear me?

I hear you, Jean. Yours is a voice

disabused; and inside the cold of  it,

there’s a sort of festival.