Poems Read online

  Never can be sky or star.

  From prison, in a prison, we fly;

  There’s no way into the sky.

  AN EXPOSTULATION

  Against Too Many Writers of Science Fiction

  Why did you lure us on like this,

  Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,

  Building (as though we cared for size!)

  Empires that cover galaxies,

  If at the journey’s end we find

  The same old stuff we left behind,

  Well-worn Tellurian stories of

  Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,

  Whose setting might as well have been

  The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnal Green?

  Why should I leave this green-floored cell,

  Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,

  Unless, outside its guarded gates,

  Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,

  Strangeness that moves us more than fear,

  Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,

  Or Wonder, laying on one’s heart

  That finger-tip at which we start

  As if some thought too swift and shy

  For reason’s grasp had just gone by?

  ODORA CANUM VIS

  A Defence of Certain Modern Biographers and Critics

  Come now, don’t be too eager to condemn

  Our little smut-hounds if they wag their tails

  (Or shake like jellies as the tails wag them)

  The moment the least whiff of sex assails

  Their quivering snouts. Such conduct after all,

  Though comic, is in them quite natural.

  As those who have seen no lions must revere

  A bull for Pan’s fortissimo, or those

  Who never tasted wine will value beer

  Too highly, so the smut-hound, since he knows

  Neither God, hunger, thought, nor battle, must

  Of course hold disproportioned views on lust.

  Of all the Invaders that’s the only one

  Even he could not escape; so have a heart,

  Don’t tie them up or whip them, let them run.

  So! Cock your ears, my pretties! Play your part!

  The dead are all before you, take your pick.

  Fetch! Paid for! Slaver, snuff, defile and lick.

  ON A VULGAR ERROR

  No. It’s an impudent falsehood. Men did not

  Invariably think the newer way

  Prosaic, mad, inelegant, or what not.

  Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot

  Upon the church? Did anybody say

  How modern and how ugly? They did not.

  Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot

  With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,

  Were these at first a horror? They were not.

  If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food

  All set us hankering after yesterday,

  Need this be only an archaising mood?

  Why, any man whose purse has been let blood

  By sharpers, when he finds all drained away

  Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

  If a quack doctor’s breezy ineptitude

  Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway

  All that I can’t do now, all that I could?

  So, when our guides unanimously decry

  The backward glance, I think we can guess why.

  THE FUTURE OF FORESTRY

  How will the legend of the age of trees

  Feel, when the last tree falls in England?

  When the concrete spreads and the town conquers

  The country’s heart; when contraceptive

  Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded,

  Tramline flows where slept a hamlet,

  And shop-fronts, blazing without a stop from

  Dover to Wrath, have glazed us over?

  Simplest tales will then bewilder

  The questioning children, ‘What was a chestnut?

  Say what it means to climb a Beanstalk.

  Tell me, grandfather, what an elm is.

  What was Autumn? They never taught us.’

  Then, told by teachers how once from mould

  Came growing creatures of lower nature

  Able to live and die, though neither

  Beast nor man, and around them wreathing

  Excellent clothing, breathing sunlight—

  Half understanding, their ill-acquainted

  Fancy will tint their wonder-paintings

  —Trees as men walking, wood-romances

  Of goblins stalking in silky green,

  Of milk-sheen froth upon the lace of hawthorn’s

  Collar, pallor on the face of birchgirl.

  So shall a homeless time, though dimly

  Catch from afar (for soul is watchful)

  A sight of tree-delighted Eden.

  LINES DURING A GENERAL ELECTION

  Their threats are terrible enough, but we could bear

  All that; it is their promises that bring despair.

  If beauty, that anomaly, is left us still,

  The cause lies in their poverty, not in their will.

  If they had power (‘amenities are bunk’), conceive

  How their insatiate gadgetry by this would leave

  No green, nor growth, nor quietude, no sap at all

  In England from The Land’s-End to the Roman Wall.

  Think of their roads—broad as the road to Hell—by now

  Murdering a million acres that demand the plough,

  The thick-voiced Tannoy blaring over Arthur’s grave,

  And all our coasts one Camp till not the tiniest wave

  Stole from the beach unburdened with its festal scum

  Of cigarette-ends, orange-peel, and chewing-gum.

  Nor would one island’s rape suffice. Their visions are

  Global; they mean the desecration of a Star;

  Their happiest fancies dwell upon a time when Earth,

  Flickering with sky-signs, gibbering with mechanic mirth,

  One huge celestial charabanc, will stink and roll

  Through patient heaven, subtopianized from pole to pole.

  THE CONDEMNED

  There is a wildness still in England that will not feed

  In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer’s hand,

  Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed

  In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

  Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk

  Cannot swell the rejoicings at this new world you make

  —We, hedge-hoggèd as Johnson or Borrow, strange to the yoke

  As Landor, surly as Cobbett (that badger), birdlike as Blake.

  A new scent troubles the air—to you, friendly perhaps—

  But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.

  To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,

  And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.

  THE GENUINE ARTICLE

  You do not love the Bourgeoisie. Of course: for they

  Begot you, bore you, paid for you, and punched your head;

  You work with them; they’re intimate as board and bed;

  How could you love them, meeting them thus every day?

  You love the Proletariat, the thin, far-away

  Abstraction which resembles any workman fed

  On mortal food as closely as the shiny red

  Chessknight resembles stallions when they stamp and neigh.

  For kicks are dangerous; riding schools are painful, coarse

  And ribald places. Every way it costs far less

  To learn the harmless manage of the wooden horse

  —So calculably taking the small jumps of chess.

  Who, that can love nonentities, would choose the labour

  Of loving the quotidian face and fact, his neighb
our?

  ON THE ATOMIC BOMB

  Metrical Experiment

  So; you have found an engine

  Of injury that angels

  Might dread. The world plunges,

  Shies, snorts, and curvets like a horse in danger.

  Then comfort her with fondlings,

  With kindly word and handling,

  But do not believe blindly

  This way or that. Both fears and hopes are swindlers.

  What’s here to dread? For mortals

  Both hurt and death were certain

  Already; our light-hearted

  Hopes from the first sentenced to final thwarting.

  This marks no huge advance in

  The dance of Death. His pincers

  Were grim before with chances

  Of cold, fire, suffocation, Ogpu, cancer.

  Nor hope that this last blunder

  Will end our woes by rending

  Tellus herself asunder—

  All gone in one bright flash like dryest tinder.

  As if your puny gadget

  Could dodge the terrible logic

  Of history! No; the tragic

  Road will go on, new generations trudge it.

  Narrow and long it stretches,

  Wretched for one who marches

  Eyes front. He never catches

  A glimpse of the fields each side, the happy orchards.

  TO THE AUTHOR OF FLOWERING RIFLE

  Rifles may flower and terrapins may flame

  But truth and reason will be still the same.

  Call them Humanitarians if you will,

  The merciful are promised mercy still;

  Loud fool! to think a nickname could abate

  The blessing given to the compassionate.

  Fashions in polysyllables may fright

  Those Charlies on the Left of whom you write;

  No wonder; since it was from them you learned

  How white to black by jargon can be turned,

  And though your verse outsoars with eagle pride

  Their nerveless rhythms (of which the old cow died)

  Yet your shrill covin-politics and theirs

  Are two peas in a single pod—who cares

  Which kind of shirt the murdering Party wears?

  Repent! Recant! Some feet of sacred ground,

  A target to both gangs, can yet be found,

  Sacred because, though now it’s no-man’s-land,

  There stood your father’s house; there you should stand.

  TO ROY CAMPBELL

  Dear Roy—Why should each wowzer on the list

  Of those you damn be dubbed Romanticist?

  In England the romantic stream flows not

  From waterish Rousseau but from manly Scott,

  A right branch on the old European tree

  Of valour, truth, freedom, and courtesy,

  A man (though often slap-dash in his art)

  Civilized to the centre of his heart,

  A man who, old and cheated and in pain,

  Instead of snivelling, got to work again,

  Work without end and without joy, to save

  His honour, and go solvent to the grave;

  Yet even so, wrung from his failing powers,

  One book of his would furnish ten of ours

  With characters and scenes. The very play

  Of mind, I think, is birth-controlled to-day.

  It flows, I say, from Scott; from Coleridge too.

  A bore? A sponge? A laudanum-addict? True;

  Yet Newman in that ruinous master saw

  One who restored our faculty for awe,

  Who re-discovered the soul’s depth and height,

  Who pricked with needles of the eternal light

  An England at that time half numbed to death

  With Paley’s, Bentham’s, Malthus’ wintry breath.

  For this the reigning Leftist cell may be

  His enemies, no doubt. But why should we?

  Newman said much the same of Wordsworth too.

  Now certain critics, far from dear to you,

  May also fondle Wordsworth. But who cares?

  Look at the facts. He’s far more ours than theirs;

  Or, if we carve him up, then all that’s best

  Falls to our share—we’ll let them take the rest.

  By rights the only half they should enjoy

  Is the rude, raw, unlicked, North Country boy.

  CORONATION MARCH

  Blow the trumpet! guardee tramp it!

  Once to lord it thus was vulgar;

  Then we could afford it; empire simpered,

  Gold and gunboats were an ace of trumps.

  Ranting poets then were plenty,

  Loyalty meant royalties. Life is changing.

  Now that bandogs mouth at random

  Lion fallen into age and clawless,

  Mid their snarling is the time for skirling

  Pipes, and carefree scarlet. Therefore,

  Rumble in the pageant drum-beat’s magic,

  Bunting wave on frontage bravely,

  Grammar of heraldic rules unfolded

  Spill forth gold and gules, and needling

  Spire in floodlight pierce the midnight,

  Pale as paper! Bright as any trumpet

  Twinkle under taper gold of saintly

  Crown of Edward; faintlier silver’s

  Elven gleam give female answer

  With robe and globe and holiness of mitre.

  Bray the trumpet, rumble tragic

  Drum-beat’s magic, sway the logic

  Of legs that march a thousand in a uniform,

  Flags and arches, the lion and the unicorn

  Romp it, rampant, pompous tramping . . .

  Some there are that talk of Alexander

  With a tow-row-row-row-row-row.

  ‘MAN IS A LUMPE WHERE ALL BEASTS KNEADED BE’

  Is this your duty? Never lay your ear

  Back to your skull and snarl, bright Tiger! Down

  Bruin! Grimalkin back! Did you not hear

  Man’s voice and see Man’s frown?

  Too long, sleek purring Panther, you have paid

  Your flatteries; far too long about my breast

  You, Snake, like ivy have coiled. I’ll not be stayed,

  I know my own way best.

  Down, the whole pack! or else . . . so; now you are meek.

  But then, alas, your eyes. Poor cowering brutes,

  Your boundless pain, your strength to bear so weak—

  It bites at my heart-roots.

  Oh, courage. I’ll come back when I’ve grown shepherd

  To feed you, and grown child to lead you all

  Where there’s green pasture waiting for the leopard

  And for the wolf a stall;

  But not before I’ve come where I am bound

  And made the end and the beginning meet,

  When over and under Earth I have travelled round

  The whole heaven’s milky street.

  ON A PICTURE BY CHIRICO

  Two sovereign horses standing on the sand. There are no men,

  The men have died, the houses fallen. A thousand years’ war

  Conclude in grass and graves, and bones and waves on a bare shore

  Are rolled in a cold evening when there is rain in the air.

  These were not killed and eaten with the rest. They were too swift

  And strong for the last, stunted men to hunt in the great dearth.

  Then they were already terrible. They inherit the large earth,

  The pleasant pastures, resonant with their snorting charge.

  Now they have come to the end of land. They meet for the first time

  In early, bitter March the falling arches of the sea, vast

  And vacant in the sunset light, where once the ships passed.

  They halt, sniffing the salt in the air, and whinny with their lips.

  These are not like the horses we have r
idden; that old look

  Of half-indignant melancholy and delicate alarm’s gone.

  Thus perhaps looked the breeding-pair in Eden when a day shone

  First upon tossing manes and glossy flanks at play.

  They are called. Change overhangs them. Their neighing is half speech.

  Death-sharp across great seas, a seminal breeze from the far side

  Calls to their new-crowned race to leave the places where Man died—

  The offer, is it? the prophecy, of a Houyhnhnms’ Land?

  ON A THEME FROM NICOLAS OF CUSA

  (De Docta Ignorantia, III, ix)

  When soul and body feed, one sees

  Their differing physiologies.

  Firmness of apple, fluted shape

  Of celery, or tight-skinned grape

  I grind and mangle when I eat,

  Then in dark, salt, internal heat,

  Annihilate their natures by

  The very act that makes them I.

  But when the soul partakes of good

  Or truth, which are her savoury food,

  By some far subtler chemistry

  It is not they that change, but she,

  Who feels them enter with the state

  Of conquerors her opened gate,

  Or, mirror-like, digests their ray

  By turning luminous as they.

  WHAT THE BIRD SAID EARLY IN THE YEAR

  I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear

  ‘This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

  ‘Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

  This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

  ‘This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

  Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

  ‘This time they will not lead you round and back

  To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

  ‘This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

  We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

  ‘Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

  Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.’

  THE SALAMANDER

  I stared into the fire; blue waves

  Of shuddering heat that rose and fell,

  And blazing ships and blinding caves,

  Canyons and streets and hills of hell;