I’m nothing.
I’ll always be nothing.
I can’t even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I’ve got all the world’s dreams inside me.
We’ve conquered the world before getting out of bed,
But we wake and the world is opaque,
We get up and the world looks strange,
We go out in the street and there’s the whole earth,
Plus Solar System, Milky Way, and the old Indefinitude.
In how many garrets and nongarrets of the world
Are there self-styled geniuses dreaming now ?
How many high-minded aspirations, noble and lucid—
Yes, really high-minded, noble and lucid—,
And who knows, even practicable,
Will ever see the real light of day or get a hearing ?
The world is made for those born to conquer it,
Not those who dream of conquering it, right though they may be.
I’ve dreamt of more things than Napoleon went and did.
I’ve taken to my so-called heart more humanity than Christ ever did.
I’ve secretly thought up more philosophies than Kant ever wrote down.
(Oh, my comforters, who don’t exist and so may comfort,
Whether Greek goddess, conceived as a statue that springs alive,
Or Roman matron, impossibly noble and ominous,
Or Princess of the troubadours, so blushing and so gentle,
Or eighteenth-century marchioness, so décolletée and cool,
Or famous courtesan back in our parents’ time,
Or modern whatever—since I can’t imagine what—
All of it, whatever it may be, if you can inspire, do it !
I lived, I studied, I loved, I even believed,
And now there’s no beggar I don’t envy simply for not being me.
In each I see the rags, the sores, the lies,
And think : maybe you never lived, studied, loved, believed
(Because people can go through the same without doing any of that);
Maybe you barely existed, like the lizard whose tail’s been snipped
And is just a tail, apart from the lizard, and beating frantically.
In every asylum there are madmen sure of so much !
I, sure of nothing, am I more sure or less sure than they ?
No, not even of myself . . .
I failed in everything.
Since I was up to nothing, maybe it was all really nothing.