A Piece of Monologue

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Theme Every night, an old man 'Gropes to window and stares out. Stands there staring out. Stock still staring out. Nothing stirring in that black vast. Gropes back in the end to where the lamp is standing.' We, like Speaker, must "wait on" words.

Every night, an old man 'Gropes to window and stares out. Stands there staring out. Stock still staring out. Nothing stirring in that black vast. Gropes back in the end to where the lamp is standing.' We, like Speaker, must "wait on" words. 'Waits for first word always the same. It gathers in his mouth. Parts lips and thrusts tongue forward. Birth.' The birth of the first word marks the inescapable progression towards death: 'Birth was the death of him.' The human condition is one of 'dying and going. From the word go.' Doomed to join 'the dead and gone,' his rejection- 'No such thing as no light,' acts metaphorically for the imaginative groping 'through rift in dark to other dark,' to penetrate the 'further dark' of other existence beyond the subjective self.