The sick grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone; at the window <br />The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, <br />As a little wind comes in. <br />The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd <br />Scooped out and dry, where a spider, <br />Folded in its legs as in a bed, <br />Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see but twilight and walls. <br /> <br />And if the day outside were mine! What is the day <br />But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging <br />Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them <br />Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over <br />The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave! <br />I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness. <br /> <br />But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings <br />Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards <br />And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible, <br />So that the birds are like one wafted feather, <br />Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country.<br /><br />David Herbert Lawrence<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/malade-2/
