Not to Live

(Jamestown 1957) It kissed us, soft, to cut our throats, this coast, like a malice of the lazy King. I hunt, & hunt! but find here what to kill?—nothing is blunt, but phantoming uneases I find. Ghost on ghost precedes of all most scared us, most we fled. Howls fail upon this secret, far air: grunt, shaming for food; you must. I love the King & it was not I who strangled at the toast but a flux of a free & dying adjutant: God be with him. He & God be with us all, for we are not to live, I cannot wring, like laundry, blue my soul—indecisive thing . . From undergrowth & over odd birds call and who would starv'd so survive? God save the King.