Rodez

Northward I came, and knocked in the coated wall At the door of a low inn scaled like a urinal With greenish tiles. The door gave, and I came Home to the stone north, every wynd and snicket Known to me wherever the flattened cat Squirmed home to a hole between housewall and paving. Known! And in the turns of it, no welcome, No flattery of the beckoned lighted eye From a Rose of the rose-brick alleys of Toulouse. Those more than tinsel garlands, more than masks, Unfading wreaths of ancient summers, I Sternly cast off. A stern eye is the graceless Bulk and bruise that at the steep uphill Confronts me with its drained-of-colour sandstone Implacably. The Church. It is Good Friday. Goodbye to the Middle Ages! Although some Think that I enter them, those centuries Of monkish superstition, here I leave them With their true garlands, and their honest masks, Every fresh flower cast on the porch and trodden, Raked by the wind at the Church door on this Friday. Goodbye to all the centuries. There is No home in them, much as the dip and turn Of an honest alley charmingly deceive us. And not yet quite goodbye. Instead almost Welcome, I said. Bleak equal centuries Crowded the porch to be deflowered, crowned.