COMPULSORY TASKS
Words, it is apparent
That you are crucified and fondled
By the pride of each new generation.
O words, whose sportive formations
Could make the courts of intellect
Belligerent and insane,
Men have sentenced you
To scores of endless drudgeries.
Weakened by the years,
You guard the dying bonfires
Of each nation and race.
Again, like hordes of cattle,
You drag the expectations
Of social theories and remedies,
Stopping only when the blood of men
Washes away your useless labours.
I have seen your bands
Of ragged courtesans
Marching in feverish lines
To rescue the rites of sex.
I have watched you rush
To repair the cracks
In breaking cathedrals and churches.
With gilded, exclamatory vowels
You garnish the cowering of earth,
And with recurring darkness
You spurn the peering mind.
Again you are hands of intellect,
Disrobing the flesh of men
And carefully preserving
Each discarded garment
With a pinch of powdered emotion.
Again you are driven forth
In lying mobs of sighs and laughs
To warm the evening hours of a nation.
(“They could never restrain themselves
To wait at home for the postman ...
Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes?”)
Sentimental breathlessness
Fleeing from the helpless decay of thought.
O words, brow-beaten bricklayers
Obeying the shouts of science
And raising walls upon whose top
The soul is perched, contemptuously
Squinting down at toiling pygmies:
O words, and you can be
Superbly demented skeptics,
Betraying the unctuous failures of earth;
Riding the wild horse of the mind:
Bringing spurs into play;
Summoning with pain the lurking soul.