Two stanzas this time — but I think 1.5(b) is probably superfluous, hence the ‘(b)’.
1.5
A languid month he’d lain — and waited –
Withdrawn into his attic room,
Had let that thought gestate — debated:
‘Shall I abort that seed of doom?…
Why bother? It’s a plaything! Foolish!…
Starvation’s made my thinking ghoulish
And added to my stomach-pains
The morbid toys of addled brains…’
Yet as he viewed with deep derision
Those radical dark reveries
He’d once indulged, his fantasies…
His impotence and indecision –
He’d feel anew the desperate need
To do some — no… to do that deed.
1.5(b)
But even now, the town surrounds him
With spying windows, statues, eyes.
Some thing – within? without him? – hounds him.
How compromised is his disguise?
He’s overdone with endless stewing –
Excessive thought, deficient doing:
Is he the gloomy dithering Dane,
Or Cawdor’s gory-handed thane?
… On third thought — fourth? — far better fearful
And yet uncaught than overbold.
(Siberia is very cold.)
So: ‘Step by step. Stay cool. Look cheerful.’
Rodya, resolved, regains the street;
The cobbles flash beneath his feet!
Stalin’s Daughter Lived and Died Just 30 Miles from the Numerous Hiking and Camping Opportunities Offered By JOB’s Compound in Darkest Wisconsin
Well, hello there, Lana Peters.