Of moment

Living began as an orderly promise,
contingent on doing, now and then on changing,
feeling a little, rightly not too keenly,
amid unrelated regretted confusions.

Went on into the dark,
prone to trusting; such new jangles eased
by unrulier patterns of nervous engrossment.
A tentative nature snarled up in black thatch.

Till life, like some off-road half-roofless frereche,
demanding in general ways itemised things,
requiring no less than to be kept up somehow
whether or not calmly, seemed navigable.

Perhaps ship-shape - but hard to narrate;
until I knew the meaning of his livelong moment,
that mad unsparing patron of unsteady truth -
Moments - more than a breeze, freshening cold informants

Of the coming of death, and the time when that matters:
No hour of despair, after all; happiness is called that;
Just the line where things happen to inch you along -

where the mind is pressed and that old, dense fog
turns out to be water, to be drunk and swum.