Laura Riding Jackson

Do not deny, do not deny

thing out of thing.

Do not deny in the new vanity

the old, original dust.

From what grave, what past

of flesh and bone

dreaming, dreaming I lie

under the fortunate curse,

bewitched, alive,

forgetting the first stuff.

Death does not give a moment

to remember in

lest, like a statue's too

transmuted stone,

I grain by grain recall

the original dust

and looking down a stair of memory

keep saying

This was never I.