After
THE sky is very blue to-day,
And the soft turf yields
To each well-fitting shoe; so they
Bring their bananas and sandwiches
To munch on the battle-fields.
O, why has Nature taken such a sheen,
Why does the grass grow green,
So cruelly green?
O, surely it must wither in the spate
Of clashing contumacious worlds of agony and hate!
How can the sun keep pace so? why not reel,
White steel,
Or stagger ankleted with yawning fire
Neath the tremendous byre?
But the absurd courageous clouds
Look on, look on
In bustling business crowds,
They con
A Masse-Mensch imaginary power.
They do not cower
Before the charabancs’ toot toot a toot
And men who bring their sandwiches to boot,
And break beer-bottles where men’s souls were torn
By invisible billion hands ... where agony was born.
There is a lady in an orange gown.
(Did not those shrieks hang airily down,
Suspended for eternity to hear,
A thousand tired stars over a shattered town
Not formed enough to speak, but formed enough to shriek
And formed enough to make men fear?)
Not so. The roses dangle deep asleep,
Men play Bo-peep
With poor worn-out banalities,
Sentimentalities,
Tepid-with-languor-lilies
And daffodillies.
We shall have each wind-melody dictated
And by Puccini orchestrated,
And from innumerable Noah’s arks
Those little gasps of men make little gasp remarks
And puff Abdullas in their elegant central parks.
A cross ... a cross ... and row on row the same
Small cross without a name,
Each silhouette so slim
And, God, how ghastlily trim!
And down beneath the skeletons are piled.
... But now a child
Discovering some fraction of a bomb,
Adventure-wild,
Performs a jig with exquisite aplomb
Over, who knows? a corpse or mandrake root
(What matters it?) the charabancs toot-toot,
The sky’s so very blue to-day
And the soft turf yields
To each well-fitting shoe: and they
Bring their bananas and sandwiches
To munch on the battle-fields.
Green grow the Rushes, O
AND do the rushes grow so green
Upon this chill All Hallows’ E’en
That voices as a lutany
Surge through my window-panes to die?
For in this room of rot and rust
These dark red circles filled with dust,
These sodden and lead-heavy eyes
Long stunned with muted symphonies,
Are racked with the old hunger, hung
With memory’s hard ice-flakes, stung
By each note-star in crystal set
To glint and pierce this lazaret.