The proposition bemused his hostess, and sounded true
Although it was not: "I don't care what I eat
As long as it is always the same thing." The meal
In question was Swiss cheese and brown bread, perfect

For a man who would rather whistle a Bach concerto
From start to finish than play soccer or have sex.
The whistling was thin, literal, persistent, in what
Was otherwise silence, in a long northern winter,

Alone in the room, no one to know if he stops
And turns to do another task, or completes the passage,
As he does, and begins it again. This is the music
He wants to hear, the proposition which always

Completes itself, and can be repeated, every day,
The abstract meal, the ideal conversation, a single task
Pressed until it matters more than anything and no
Attention, no repetition, is found excessive.

How could he fail to be disappointed in the world?
Thus the infantile outbursts, storming from the lecture,
Thus the rancor, the rancid taunts, dismissed
From his post for striking a student. . . . How important it was

For the room to be bare: no couch, no rugs, a few
Folded canvas chairs set out when the seminar arrived.
But how tedious, their avid efforts to keep up!
How clear it was in the stark hut with its one

Straight chair, and on the rough table, a knife,
A loaf. An abstract conversation, in silence,
The silence of a life still to be lived, in the absence
Of hope, or the pause between concertos, or the blank
Hours between two meals, to be filled with work
On the next problem. At Cambridge in the evenings
He went to the movies, gangster noirs, tight-lipped.
"A good mystery," he said, "is worth more than all

Philosophical texts together." Is there no impatience,
No arrogance or refusal to which he will not stoop?
Who can stand the man! Must we have him to dinner,
To our table, generous and varied, to our company

Of voluble men? This ghost at our feast, this turned-down
Glass? A sullen insistence. The drained voice of what,
In decayed words, we might still say, if we could say
What we mean, and say the same thing each time.