I am born to defend the drunken stars,
And their climbing clouds of inebriate light.
I am born to love that city child
Who claws at cement,
And pretends to find passion again.

I am born to believe in the wrinkled,
Lonely seed of fallen Joy,
And in the ragged vision
Of an alcoholic child:
The possible greenness of Keats.

I am born to despise the sterile jubilance
Of unrepentant Stoics:
Where the evil liquors of the mind condense,
Where the pre-political song is lost,
Where the sharp cry from the hills is faded,

No God nor greenness ever comes.
And I acknowledge symbolic tinsel:
The cracked mirror distorts the Dream,
And the rose is unpetalled by lust.

But I belong to the pure holiness of myth,
Where cement is rivered by desire.
In the bold dream of wine,

The child-souls wither but still defy
The machine shop verdict.
Their despair is ancient,
Unbeginning like the Phoenix,
And the death-wish is their deep nobility.
I am dedicated to heroic decay
And the stammering revolt.....