It is the word pejorative that hurts.

My old boat goes round on a crutch

And doesn’t get under way.

It’s the time of the year

And the time of the day.

Perhaps it’s the lunch that we had

Or the lunch that we should have had.

But I am, in any case,

A most inappropriate man

In a most unpropitious place.

Mon Dieu, hear the poet’s prayer.

The romantic should be here.

The romantic should be there.

It ought to be everywhere.

But the romantic must never remain,

Mon Dieu, and must never again return.

This heavy historical sail

Through the mustiest blue of the lake

In a really vertiginous boat

Is wholly the vapidest fake.…

It is least what one ever sees.

It is only the way one feels, to say

Where my spirit is I am,

To say the light wind worries the sail,

To say the water is swift today,

To expunge all people and be a pupil

Of the gorgeous wheel and so to give

That slight transcendence to the dirty sail,

By light, the way one feels, sharp white,

And then rush brightly through the summer air.