Samuel Beckett's Dublin

When it is cold it stinks, and not till then. The seasonable or more rabid heats Of love and summer in some other cities Unseal the all too human: not in his. When it is cold it stinks, but not before; Smells to high heaven then most creaturely When it is cold. It stinks, but not before His freezing eye has done its best to maim, To amputate limbs, livelihood and name, Abstracting life beyond all likelihood. When it is cold it stinks, and not till then Can it be fragrant. On canal and street, Colder and colder, Murphy to Molloy, The weather hardens round the Idiot Boy, The gleeful hero of the long retreat. When he is cold he stinks, but not before, This living corpse. The existential weather Smells out in these abortive minims, men Who barely living therefore altogether Live till they die; and sweetly smell till then.