“Joy we denied,”
they mutter in the mud, “out there
in the sweet air which takes delight in the sun,
secreted smog within.
Now, here,
under the black, thick tide
we learn
all about despair.”
He ran like those who race for the cloth-of-green
through the fields outside Verona,
and among those runners he seemed
not to be one of the losers, but the winner.