John Fowles’ Multiple Personality Poems (post 2): Note namelessness of alternate personality who writes poems after midnight in “The Two Selves” 

Alter Ego

The boy from Uplyme with his smile

Who stands on cliff-tops staring down:

One stares as well. The sea is barren,

And the beach. But still he stares.

Branches of sloe and bullace

Cloud his dar, his idiot eyes.

Always he wears the vacant smile

Of happy mongoloids and kings.

One day he turned and spoke to me.

I’m John, he said. I like it here.

The Two Selves

Making whole is making two halves,

The treadmill and the real;

One for the world to turn to pulp

Beneath its vicious heel.

The other drinks water, has no name,

Sits writing poetry after midnight,

Will be when the world’s [sic] is gone;

And was before the world’s [sic] first came.

Comment: These two poems confirm that the author of The Collector was interested in multiple personality. They also illustrate the association between namelessness and multiple personality; in particular, with those alternate personalities who don’t need names, because they rarely have conversations.

John Fowles. Poems. New York, The Ecco Press, 1973.