Huxley Hall

In the Garden City Café with its murals on the wall

Before a talk on “Sex and Civics” I meditated on the Fall.

Deep depression settled on me under that electric glare

While outside the lightsome poplars flanked the rose-beds in the square.

While outside the carefree children sported in the summer haze

And released their inhibitions in a hundred different ways.

She who eats her greasy crumpets snugly in the inglenook

Of some birch-enshrouded homestead, dropping butter on her book

Can she know the deep depression of this bright, hygienic hell?

And her husband, stout free-thinker, can he share in it as well?

Not the folk-museum’s charting of man’s Progress out of slime

Can release me from the painful seeming accident of Time.

Barry smashes Shirley’s dolly, Shirley’s eyes are crossed with hate,

Comrades plot a Comrade’s downfall “in the interests of the State”.

Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime-juice minus gin,

Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born in Sin.