these relics or fragments now
– abrade into dust
mix w/ yr spittle
build up
then breathe
miswrite their names
reborn w/
flaming red hair
– scarlet
why not?
appearance is all
only the shine
– when that’s gone
burst
Verwandlungzauber zu einem Tapir
eterocliti, tapiri e preoccupazione rendono un paio
sulla strada vanno sulle gambe tozze
camminare con gli zoccoli troppo sensibili
significant ceremonies
news of Sheffield1
delicious laughter
let’s wait
for carnival together
what is more use here?
– the world and all its people
the poem and all its words
what has been
or what will come
remains here now
huge in an eyeblink astart
meadowsweet across the Rhine
– what can it epitomise?
what familiar perversity
threatens now our waterfowl?
maybe no real worry
– let’s learn German
get a job
decide which warband
might protect us best2
1.(a) At top of steps, some half-mile from the sea3
Sat——in the morning and out of the sea up to him
Came——seeking favour and on left and right
Stood——quick as trees, then said——
These are ours and therein all that is
And the living creatures of the field and fen
Made echo sound upon the day’s platface.
p 318
(b) The Towers came nearer over the mist.4
I heard my kind pattering all about
The shafts, the upward and the downward shafts,
And rolling silent out in silent daylight
Innumerous pellicules.
Passed the X
And cliff of many windows, slept along
Crossed by the Pass of two Towers
And so ad infinitum to the stars.
p 319
(c) It is today, when silence falls,5
And all the people standing on the quay
To watch the big ships sail away
Stop waving to their friends
and say
The answer to the sun is death
Charles Madge, “The Hours of the Planets”, p 324
2 You above all who have come to the far end, victims
Of a run-down machine, who can bear it no longer;
Whether in easy chairs chafing at impotence
Or against hunger, bullies and spies preserving
The nerve for action, the spark of indignation——
Need fight in the dark no more, you know your enemies.
You shall be leaders when zero hour is signalled,
Wielders of power and welders of a new world.
C. Day Lewis, “‘You that love England’”, in edited by Michael Roberts, The Faber Book of Modern Verse (Faber & Faber, 1936), p 265
what’s offered
by little creatures
all inside
won’t redeem
just carry on
dappled in the shade
all our disordered selves
1 drips of water, drips of steel
2 The future is feudal; the past was progress; the present no longer
3 “The rise of the bourgeoisie”
4 “Glimpses of reality”
5 ♂
