For twenty-one years he remained, faithful and lounging
There, under the last tree, at the end of the charming evening street.
His flask was always full for the unhappy, rich, or bold;
He could always tell you where you wanted to go, what you wanted to be told,
5And during all the dear twenty-one years he remained exactly twenty-one years old.
His eyes were the most honest of all, his smile the most naturally sweet.
Many, many trusted him who trusted no one. Many extremely clever
Persons will kill themselves unless they find him. They search
Sparkling with fear, through the whole quarter. They even enter the Church.
10Crowds, across all Europe, are beginning to feel they've been left in the lurch.
But it's worse than that. It's something they couldn't tell anyone, ever.
He's abandoned his post because he was the greatest of all informers,
And now he's gone to report. He never had a moment's leisure.
He was paid by so many powers that one shakes with shame
15To think of them. Time, the Army and Navy, Pain and Blame,
The Police, the Family, and Death. No one will escape. He got every name.
And he wasn't at all what he said he was. Mr. Pleasure.
It is one of the great poems of spiritual dissapation, and nobody is likely to approve of it.
— Clive James