AFTER THE OPERA
DOWN the stone stairs
Girls with their large eyes wide with tragedy
Lift looks of shocked and momentous emotion
up at me.
And I smile.
Ladies
Stepping like birds with their bright and pointed feet
Peer anxiously forth, as if for a boat to carry them out
of the wreckage,
And among the wreck of the theatre crowd
I stand and smile.
They take tragedy so becomingly.
Which pleases me.
But when I meet the weary eyes
The reddened aching eyes of the bar-man with thin
arms,
I am glad to go back to where I came from.
GOING BACK
THE NIGHT turns slowly round,
Swift trains go by in a rush of light;
Slow trains steal past.
This train beats anxiously, outward bound.
But I am not here.
I am away, beyond the scope of this turning;
There, where the pivot is, the axis
Of all this gear.
I, who sit in tears,
I, whose heart is torn with parting;
Who cannot bear to think back to the departure
platform;
My spirit hears
Voices of men
Sound of artillery, aeroplanes, presences,
And more than all, the dead-sure silence,
The pivot again.
There, at the axis
Pain, or love, or grief
Sleep on speed; in dead certainty;
Pure relief.
There, at the pivot
Time sleeps again.
No has-been, no here-after; only the perfected
Silence of men.