It is not your system or clear sight that mills
	Down small to the consequence a life requires;
	Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

	They bled an old dog dry yet the exchange rills
	Of young dog blood gave but a month’s desires;
	The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

	It is the Chinese tombs and the slag hills
	Usurp the soil, and not the soil retires.
	Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.

	Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.
	The complete fire is death. From partial fires
	The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

	It is the poems you have lost, the ills
	From missing dates, at which the heart expires.
	Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
	The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

WILLIAM EMPSON Aubade

	Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake.
	My house was on a cliff. The thing could take
	Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row.
	Then the long pause and then the bigger shake.
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

	And far too large for my feet to step by.
	I hoped that various buildings were brought low.
	The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

	It seemed quite safe till she got up and dressed.
	The guarded tourist makes the guide the test.
	Then I said The Garden? Laughing she said No.
	Taxi for her and for me healthy rest.
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

	The language problem but you have to try.
	Some solid ground for lying could she show?
	The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

	None of these deaths were her point at all.
	The thing was that being woken he would bawl
	And finding her not in earshot he would know.
	I tried saying Half an Hour to pay this call.
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

	I slept, and blank as that I would yet lie.
	Till you have seen what a threat holds below,
	The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

	Tell me again about Europe and her pains,
	Who’s tortured by the drought, who by the rains.
	Glut me with floods where only the swine can row
	Who cuts his throat and let him count his gains.
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

	A bedshift flight to a Far Eastern sky.
	Only the same war on a stronger toe.
	The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

	Tell me more quickly what I lost by this,
	Or tell me with less drama what they miss
	Who call no die a god for a good throw,
	Who say after two aliens had one kiss
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.

	But as to risings, I can tell you why.
	It is on contradiction that they grow.
	It seemed the best thing to be up and go.
	Up was the heartening and the strong reply.
	The heart of standing is we cannot fly.

LOUIS MACNEICE Meeting Point 1941

	Time was away and somewhere else,
	There were two glasses and two chairs
	And two people with the one pulse
	(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):
	Time was away and somewhere else.

	And they were neither up nor down:
	The stream’s music did not stop
	Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
	Although they sat in a coffee shop
	And they were neither up nor down.

	The bell was silent in the air
	Holding its inverted poise –
	Between the clang and clang a flower,
	A brazen calyx of no noise:
	The bell was silent in the air.

	The camels crossed the miles of sand
	That stretched around the cups and plates;
	The desert was their own, they planned
	To portion out the stars and dates:
	The camels crossed the miles of sand.

	Time was away and somewhere else.
	The waiter did not come, the clock
	Forgot them and the radio waltz
	Came out like water from a rock:
	Time was away and somewhere else.

	Her fingers flicked away the ash
	That bloomed again in tropic trees:
	Not caring if the markets crash
	When they had forests such as these,
	Her fingers flicked away the ash.

	God or whatever means the Good
	Be praised that time can stop like this,
	That what the heart has understood
	God verify in the body’s peace
	God or whatever means the Good.

	Time was away and she was here
	And life no longer what it was,
	The bell was silent in the air
	And all the room one glow because
	Time was away and she was here.

LOUIS MACNEICE Autobiography

	In my childhood trees were green
	And there was plenty to be seen.

Come back early or never come.

	My father made the walls resound,
	He wore his collar the wrong way round.

Come back early or never come.

	My mother wore a yellow dress;
	Gently, gently, gentleness.

Come back early or never come.

	When I was five the black dreams came;
	Nothing after was quite the same.

Come back early or never come.

	The dark was talking to the dead;
	The lamp was dark beside my bed.

Come back early or never come.

	When I woke they did not care;
	Nobody, nobody was there.

Come back early or never come.

	When my silent terror cried,
	Nobody, nobody replied.

Come back early or never come.

	I got up; the chilly sun
	Saw me walk away alone.

Come back early or never come.

T. S. ELIOT from Little Gidding 1942

	II
	Ash on an old man’s sleeve
	Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
	Dust in the air suspended
	Marks the place where a story ended.
	Dust inbreathed was a house –
	The wall, the wainscot and the mouse.
	The death of hope and despair,
	This is the death of air.

	There are flood and drouth
	Over the eyes and in the mouth,
	Dead water and dead sand
	Contending for the upper hand.
	The parched eviscerate soil
	Gapes at the vanity of toil,
	Laughs without mirth.
	This is the death of earth.

	Water and fire succeed
	The town, the pasture and the weed.
	Water and fire deride
	The sacrifice that we denied.
	Water and fire shall rot
	The marred foundations we forgot,
	Of sanctuary and choir.
	This is the death of water and fire.

	In the uncertain hour before the morning
	Near the ending of interminable night
	At the recurrent end of the unending
	After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
	Had passed below the horizon of his homing
	While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
	Over the asphalt where no other sound was
	Between three districts whence the smoke arose
	I met one walking, loitering and hurried
	As if blown towards me like the metal leaves
	Before the urban dawn wind unresisting.
	And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
	That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
	The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
	I caught the sudden look of some dead master
	Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
	Both one and many; in the brown baked features
	The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
	Both intimate and unidentifiable.
	So I assumed a double part, and cried
	And heard another’s voice cry: ‘What! are you here?’
	Although we were not. I was still the same,
	Knowing myself yet being someone other –
	And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
	To compel the recognition they preceded.
	And so, compliant to the common wind,
	Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
	In concord at this intersection time
	Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
	We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
	I said: ‘The wonder that I feel is easy,
	Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
	I may not comprehend, may not remember.’
	And he: ‘I am not eager to rehearse
	My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
	These things have served their purpose: let them be.
	So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
	By others, as I pray you to forgive
	Both bad and good. Last season’s fruit is eaten
	And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
	For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
	And next year’s words await another voice.
	But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
	To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
	Between two worlds become much like each other,
	So I find words I never thought to speak
	In streets I never thought I should revisit
	When I left my body on a distant shore.
	Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
	To purify the dialect of the tribe
	And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
	Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
	To set a crown upon your lifetime’s effort.
	First, the cold friction of expiring sense
	Without enchantment, offering no promise
	But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
	As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
	Second, the conscious impotence of rage
	At human folly, and the laceration
	Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
	And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
	Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
	Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
	Of things ill done and done to others’ harm
	Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
	Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.
	From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
	Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
	Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.’
	The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
	He left me, with a kind of valediction,
	And faded on the blowing of the horn.

ALUN LEWIS Raiders’ Dawn

	Softly the civilized
	Centuries fall,
	Paper on paper,
	Peter on Paul.

	And lovers waking
	From the night –
	Eternity’s masters,
	Slaves of Time –
	Recognize only
	The drifting white
	Fall of small faces
	In pits of lime.

	Blue necklace left
	On a charred chair
	Tells that Beauty
	Was startled there.

NORMAN CAMERON Green, Green is El Aghir

	Sprawled on the crates and sacks in the rear of the truck,
	I was gummy-mouthed from the sun and the dust of the track.
	And the two Arab soldiers I’d taken on as hitch-hikers
	At a torrid petrol-dump, had been there on their hunkers
	Since early morning. I said, in a kind of French
	‘On m’a dit, qu’il y a une belle source d’eau fraîche.
	Plus loin, à El Aghir’…

	It was eighty more kilometres
	Until round a corner we heard a splashing of waters,
	And there, in a green, dark street, was a fountain with two faces
	Discharging both ways, from full-throated faucets
	Into basins, thence into troughs and thence into brooks.
	Our negro corporal driver slammed his brakes,
	And we yelped and leapt from the truck and went at the double

	To fill our bidons and bottles and drink and dabble.
	Then, swollen with water, we went to an inn for wine.
	The Arabs came, too, though their faith might have stood between.
	‘After all,’ they said, ‘it’s a boisson,’ without contrition.

	Green, green is El Aghir. It has a railway-station,
	And the wealth of its soil has borne many another fruit,
	A mairie, a school and an elegant Salle de Fêtes.
	Such blessings, as I remarked, in effect, to the waiter,
	Are added unto them that have plenty of water.

STEVIE SMITH Bog-Face

	Dear little Bog-Face,
	Why are you so cold?
	And why do you lie with your eyes shut? –
	You are not very old.

	I am a Child of this World,
	And a Child of Grace,
	And Mother, I shall be glad when it is over,
	I am Bog-Face.

STEVIE SMITH Dirge

	From a friend’s friend I taste friendship,
	From a friend’s friend love,
	My spirit in confusion,
	Long years I strove,
	But now I know that never
	Nearer I shall move,
	Than a friend’s friend to friendship,
	To love than a friend’s love.

	Into the dark night
	Resignedly I go,
	I am not so afraid of the dark night
	As the friends I do not know,
	I do not fear the night above,
	As I fear the friends below.

PATRICK KAVANAGH from The Great Hunger

	from I
	Clay is the word and clay is the flesh
	Where the potato-gatherers like mechanized scare-crows move
	Along the side-fall of the hill – Maguire and his men.
	If we watch them an hour is there anything we can prove
	Of life as it is broken-backed over the Book
	Of Death? Here crows gabble over worms and frogs
	And the gulls like old newspapers are blown clear of the hedges, luckily.
	Is there some light of imagination in these wet clods?
	Or why do we stand here shivering?
	Which of these men
	Loved the light and the queen
	Too long virgin? Yesterday was summer. Who was it promised marriage to himself
	Before apples were hung from the ceilings for Hallowe’en?
	We will wait and watch the tragedy to the last curtain
	Till the last soul passively like a bag of wet clay
	Rolls down the side of the hill, diverted by the angles
	Where the plough missed or a spade stands, straitening the way.

	III
	Poor Paddy Maguire, a fourteen-hour day
	He worked for years. It was he that lit the fire
	And boiled the kettle and gave the cows their hay.
	His mother tall hard as a Protestant spire
	Came down the stairs bare-foot at the kettle-call
	And talked to her son sharply: ‘Did you let
	The hens out, you?’ She had a venomous drawl
	And a wizened face like moth-eaten leatherette.
	Two black cats peeped between the banisters
	And gloated over the bacon-fizzling pan.
	Outside the window showed tin canisters.
	The snipe of Dawn fell like a whirring noise
	And Patrick on a headland stood alone.
	The pull is on the traces, it is March
	And a cold old black wind is blowing from Dundalk.
	The twisting sod rolls over on her back –
	The virgin screams before the irresistible sock.
	No worry on Maguire’s mind this day
	Except that he forgot to bring his matches.
	‘Hop back there Polly, hoy back, woa, wae,’
	From every second hill a neighbour watches
	With all the sharpened interest of rivalry.
	Yet sometimes when the sun comes through a gap
	These men know God the Father in a tree:
	The Holy Spirit is the rising sap,
	And Christ will be the green leaves that will come
	At Easter from the sealed and guarded tomb.
	Primroses and the unearthly start of ferns
	Among the blackthorn shadows in the ditch,
	A dead sparrow and an old waistcoat. Maguire learns
	As the horses turn slowly round the which is which
	Of love and fear and things half born to mind.
	He stands between the plough-handles and he sees
	At the end of a long furrow his name signed
	Among the poets, prostitute’s. With all miseries
	He is one. Here with the unfortunate
	Who for half moments of paradise
	Pay out good days and wait and wait
	For sunlight-woven cloaks. O to be wise
	As Respectability that knows the price of all things
	And marks God’s truth in pounds and pence and farthings.

	from XI
	The cards are shuffled and the deck
	Laid flat for cutting – Tom Malone
	Cut for trump. I think we’ll make
	This game, the last, a tanner one.
	Hearts. Right. I see you’re breaking
	Your two-year-old. Play quick, Maguire,
	The clock there says it’s half-past ten –
	Kate, throw another sod on that fire.
	One of the card-players laughs and spits
	Into the flame across a shoulder.
	Outside, a noise like a rat
	Among the hen-roosts. The cock crows over
	The frosted townland of the night.
	Eleven o’clock and still the game
	Goes on and the players seem to be
	Drunk in an Orient opium den.
	Midnight, one o’clock, two.
	Somebody’s leg has fallen asleep.
	What about home? Maguire are you
	Using your double-tree this week?
	Why? do you want it? Play the ace.
	There’s it, and that’s the last card for me.
	A wonderful night, we had. Duffy’s place
	Is very convenient. Is that a ghost or a tree?
	And so they go home with dragging feet
	And their voices rumble like laden carts.
	And they are happy as the dead or sleeping…
	I should have led that ace of hearts.

	from XII
	The fields were bleached white,
	The wooden tubs full of water
	Were white in the winds
	That blew through Brannagan’s Gap on their way from Siberia;
	The cows on the grassless heights
	Followed the hay that had wings –
	The February fodder that hung itself on the black branches
	Of the hilltop hedge.
	A man stood beside a potato-pit
	And clapped his arms
	And pranced on the crisp roots
	And shouted to warm himself.
	Then he buck-leaped about the potatoes
	And scooped them into a basket.
	He looked like a bucking suck-calf
	Whose spine was being tickled.
	Sometimes he stared across the bogs
	And sometimes he straightened his back and vaguely whistled
	A tune that weakened his spirit
	And saddened his terrier dog’s.

(… )

	A mother dead! The tired sentiment:
	‘Mother mother’ was a shallow pool
	Where sorrow hardly could wash its feet…
	Mary Anne came away from the deathbed and boiled the calves their gruel.
	O what was I doing when the procession passed?
	Where was I looking?
	Young women and men
	And I might have joined them.
	Who bent the coin of my destiny
	That it stuck in the slot?
	I remember a night we walked
	Through the moon of Donaghmoyne,
	Four of us seeking adventure –
	It was midsummer forty years ago.
	Now I know
	The moment that gave the turn to my life.
	O Christ! I am locked in a stable with pigs and cows for ever.

HENRY REED Judging Distances 1943

	Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
	Is very important. Perhaps you may never get
	The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
	How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
	The right of arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
	And at least you know

	That maps are of time, not place, so far as the army
	Happens to be concerned – the reason being,
	Is one which need not delay us. Again, you know
	There are three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar,
	And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly
	That things only seem to be things.

	A barn is not called a barn, to put it more plainly,
	Or a field in the distance, where sheep may be safely grazing.
	You must never be over-sure. You must say, when reporting:
	At five o’clock in the central sector is a dozen
	Of what appear to be animals; whatever you do,
	Don’t call the bleeders sheep.

	I am sure that’s quite clear; and suppose, for the sake of example,
	The one at the end, asleep, endeavours to tell us
	What he sees over there to the west, and how far away,
	After first having come to attention. There to the west,
	On the fields of summer the sun and the shadows bestow
	Vestments of purple and gold.

	The still white dwellings are like a mirage in the heat,
	And under the swaying elms a man and a woman
	Lie gently together. Which is, perhaps, only to say
	That there is a row of houses to the left of arc,
	And that under some poplars a pair of what appear to be humans
	Appear to be loving.

	Well that, for an answer, is what we might rightly call
	Moderately satisfactory only, the reason being,
	Is that two things have been omitted, and those are important.
	The human beings, now: in what direction are they,
	And how far away, would you say? And do not forget
	There may be dead ground in between.

	There may be dead ground in between; and I may not have got
	The knack of judging a distance; I will only venture
	A guess that perhaps between me and the apparent lovers
	(Who, incidentally, appear by now to have finished)
	At seven o’clock from the houses, is roughly a distance
	Of about one year and a half.

DAVID GASCOYNE Snow in Europe

	Out of their slumber Europeans spun
	Dense dreams: appeasement, miracle, glimpsed flash
	Of a new golden era; but could not restrain
	The vertical white weight that fell last night
	And made their continent a blank.

	Hush, says the sameness of the snow,
	The Ural and the Jura now rejoin
	The furthest Arctic’s desolation. All is one;
	Sheer monotone: plain, mountain; country, town:
	Contours and boundaries no longer show.

	The warring flags hang colourless a while;
	Now midnight’s icy zero feigns a truce
	Between the signs and seasons, and fades out
	All shots and cries. But when the great thaw comes,
	How red shall be the melting snow, how loud the drums!

DAVID GASCOYNE A Wartime Dawn

	Dulled by the slow glare of the yellow bulb;
	As far from sleep still as at any hour
	Since distant midnight; with a hollow skull
	In which white vapours seem to reel
	Among limp muddles of old thought; till eyes
	Collapse into themselves like clams in mud…
	Hand paws the wall to reach the chilly switch;
	Then nerve-shot darkness gradually shakes
	Throughout the room. Lie still… Limbs twitch;
	Relapse to immobility’s faint ache. And time
	A while relaxes; space turns wholly black.

	But deep in the velvet crater of the ear
	A chip of sound abruptly irritates.
	A second, a third chirp; and then another far
	Emphatic trill and chirrup shrills in answer; notes
	From all directions round pluck at the strings
	Of hearing with frail finely-sharpened claws.
	And in an instant, every wakened bird
	Across surrounding miles of air
	Outside, is sowing like a scintillating sand
	Its throat’s incessantly replenished store
	Of tuneless singsong, timeless, aimless, blind.

	Draw now with prickling hand the curtains back;
	Unpin the blackout-cloth; let in
	Grim crack-of-dawn’s first glimmer through the glass.
	All’s yet half sunk in Yesterday’s stale death,
	Obscurely still beneath a moist-tinged blank
	Sky like the inside of a deaf mute’s mouth…
	Nearest within the window’s sight, ash-pale
	Against a cinder coloured wall, the white
	Pear-blossom hovers like a stare; rain-wet
	The further housetops weakly shine; and there,
	Beyond, hangs flaccidly a lone barrage-balloon.

	An incommunicable desolation weighs
	Like depths of stagnant water on this break of day. –
	Long meditation without thought. – Until a breeze
	From some pure Nowhere straying, stirs
	A pang of poignant odour from the earth, an unheard sigh
	Pregnant with sap’s sweet tang and raw soil’s fine
	Aroma, smell of stone, and acrid breath
	Of gravel puddles. While the brooding green
	Of nearby gardens’ grass and trees, and quiet flat
	Blue leaves, the distant lilac mirages, are made
	Clear by increasing daylight, and intensified.

	Now head sinks into pillows in retreat
	Before this morning’s hovering advance;
	(Behind loose lids, in sleep’s warm porch, half hears
	White hollow clink of bottles, – dragging crunch
	Of milk-cart wheels, – and presently a snatch
	Of windy whistling as the newsboy’s bike winds near,
	Distributing to neighbour’s peaceful steps
	Reports of last-night’s battles); at last sleeps.
	While early guns on Norway’s bitter coast
	Where faceless troops are landing, renew fire:
	And one more day of War starts everywhere.

KEITH DOUGLAS Desert Flowers

	Living in a wide landscape are the flowers –
	Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying –
	the shell and the hawk every hour
	are slaying men and jerboas, slaying

	the mind: but the body can fill
	the hungry flowers and the dogs who cry words
	at nights, the most hostile things of all.
	But that is not new. Each time the night discards

	draperies on the eyes and leaves the mind awake
	I look each side of the door of sleep
	for the little coin it will take
	to buy the secret I shall not keep.

	I see men as trees suffering
	or confound the detail and the horizon.
	Lay the coin on my tongue and I will sing
	of what the others never set eyes on.

H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) from The Walls Do Not Fall 1944

	I
	An incident here and there,
	and rails gone (for guns)
	from your (and my) old town square:

	mist and mist-grey, no colour,
	still the Luxor bee, chick and hare
	pursue unalterable purpose

	in green, rose-red, lapis;
	they continue to prophesy
	from the stone papyrus:

	there, as here, ruin opens
	the tomb, the temple; enter,
	there as here, there are no doors:

	the shrine lies open to the sky,
	the rain falls, here, there
	sand drifts; eternity endures:

	ruin everywhere, yet as the fallen roof
	leaves the sealed room
	open to the air,

	so, through our desolation,
	thoughts stir, inspiration stalks us
	through gloom:

	unaware, Spirit announces the Presence;
	shivering overtakes us,
	as of old, Samuel:

	trembling at a known street-corner,
	we know not nor are known;
	the Pythian pronounces – we pass on

	to another cellar, to another sliced wall
	where poor utensils show
	like rare objects in a museum;

	Pompeii has nothing to teach us,
	we know crack of volcanic fissure,
	slow flow of terrible lava,

	pressure on heart, lungs, the brain
	about to burst its brittle case
	(what the skull can endure!):

	over us, Apocryphal fire,
	under us, the earth sway, dip of a floor,
	slope of a pavement

	where men roll, drunk
	with a new bewilderment,
	sorcery, bedevilment:

	the bone-frame was made for
	no such shock knit within terror,
	yet the skeleton stood up to it:

	the flesh? it was melted away,
	the heart burnt out, dead ember,
	tendons, muscles shattered, outer husk dismembered,

	yet the frame held:
	we passed the flame: we wonder
	what saved us? what for?

SORLEY MACLEAN Hallaig

‘Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig’

	The window is nailed and boarded
	through which I saw the West
	and my love is at the Burn of Hallaig,
	a birch tree, and she has always been

	between Inver and Milk Hollow,
	here and there about Baile-chuirn:
	she is a birch, a hazel,
	a straight, slender young rowan.

	In Screapadal of my people
	where Norman and Big Hector were,
	their daughters and their sons are a wood
	going up beside the stream.

	Proud tonight the pine cocks
	crowing on the top of Cnoc an Ra,
	straight their backs in the moonlight –
	they are not the wood I love.

	I will wait for the birch wood
	until it comes up by the cairn,
	until the whole ridge from Beinn na Lice
	will be under its shade.

	If it does not, I will go down to Hallaig,
	to the Sabbath of the dead,
	where the people are frequenting,
	every single generation gone.

	They are still in Hallaig,
	MacLeans and MacLeods,
	all who were there in the time of Mac Gille Chaluim
	the dead have been seen alive.

	The men lying on the green
	at the end of every house that was,
	the girls a wood of birches,
	straight their backs, bent their heads.

	Between the Leac and Fearns
	the road is under mild moss
	and the girls in silent bands
	go to Clachan as in the beginning,

	and return from Clachan
	from Suisnish and the land of the living;
	each one young and light-stepping,
	without the heartbreak of the tale.

	From the Burn of Fearns to the raised beach
	that is clear in the mystery of the hills,
	there is only the congregation of the girls
	keeping up the endless walk,

	coming back to Hallaig in the evening,
	in the dumb living twilight,
	filling the steep slopes,
	their laughter a mist in my ears,

	and their beauty a film on my heart
	before the dimness comes on the kyles,
	and when the sun goes down behind Dun Cana
	a vehement bullet will come from the gun of Love;

	and will strike the deer that goes dizzily,
	sniffing at the grass-grown ruined homes:
	his eye will freeze in the wood,
	his blood will not be traced while I live.

(1970)

LAURENCE BINYON Winter Sunrise

	It is early morning within this room: without,
	Dark and damp: without and within, stillness
	Waiting for day: not a sound but a listening air.

	Yellow jasmine, delicate on stiff branches
	Stands in a Tuscan pot to delight the eye
	In spare December’s patient nakedness.

	Suddenly, softly, as if at a breath breathed
	On the pale wall, a magical apparition,
	The shadow of the jasmine, branch and blossom!

	It was not there, it is there, in a perfect image;
	And all is changed. It is like a memory lost
	Returning without a reason into the mind;

	And it seems to me that the beauty of the shadow
	Is more beautiful than the flower; a strange beauty,
	Pencilled and silently deepening to distinctness.

	As a memory stealing out of the mind’s slumber,
	A memory floating up from a dark water,
	Can be more beautiful than the thing remembered.

LAURENCE BINYON The Burning of the Leaves

	Now is the time for the burning of the leaves.
	They go to the fire; the nostril pricks with smoke
	Wandering slowly into a weeping mist.
	Brittle and blotched, ragged and rotten sheaves!
	A flame seizes the smouldering ruin and bites
	On stubborn stalks that crackle as they resist.

	The last hollyhock’s fallen tower is dust;
	All the spices of June are a bitter reek,
	All the extravagant riches spent and mean.
	All burns! The reddest rose is a ghost;
	Sparks whirl up, to expire in the mist: the wild
	Fingers of fire are making corruption clean.

	Now is the time for stripping the spirit bare,
	Time for the burning of days ended and done,
	Idle solace of things that have gone before:
	Rootless hopes and fruitless desire are there;
	Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind.
	The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

	They will come again, the leaf and the flower, to arise
	From squalor of rottenness into the old splendour,
	And magical scents to a wondering memory bring;
	The same glory, to shine upon different eyes.
	Earth cares for her own ruins, naught for ours.
	Nothing is certain, only the certain spring.

KEITH DOUGLAS Vergissmeinnicht

	Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
	returning over the nightmare ground
	we found the place again, and found
	the soldier sprawling in the sun.

	The frowning barrel of his gun
	overshadowing. As we came on
	that day, he hit my tank with one
	like the entry of a demon.

	Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
	the dishonoured picture of his girl
	who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
	in a copybook gothic script.

	We see him almost with content,
	abased, and seeming to have paid
	and mocked at by his own equipment
	that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.

	But she would weep to see today
	how on his skin the swart flies move;
	the dust upon the paper eye
	and the burst stomach like a cave.

	For here the lover and killer are mingled
	who had one body and one heart.
	And death who had the soldier singled
	has done the lover mortal hurt.

ROBERT GRAVES To Juan at the Winter Solstice 1945

	There is one story and one story only
	That will prove worth your telling,
	Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
	To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
	That startle with their shining
	Such common stories as they stray into.

	Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
	Or strange beasts that beset you,
	Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
	Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
	Below the Boreal Crown,
	Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

	Water to water, ark again to ark,
	From woman back to woman:
	So each new victim treads unfalteringly
	The never altered circuit of his fate,
	Bringing twelve peers as witness
	Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

	Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
	All fish below the thighs?
	She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
	When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling,
	How may the King hold back?
	Royally then he barters life for love.

	Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
	Whose coils contain the ocean,
	Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
	Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
	Battles three days and nights,
	To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

	Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
	The owl hoots from the elder,
	Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
	Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
	The log groans and confesses:
	There is one story and one story only.

	Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
	Do not forget what flowers
	The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
	Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
	Her sea-grey eyes were wild
	But nothing promised that is not performed.

DYLAN THOMAS Poem in October

	It was my thirtieth year to heaven
	Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
	And the mussel pooled and the heron
	Priested shore
	The morning beckon
	With water praying and call of seagull and rook
	And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
	Myself to set foot
	That second
	In the still sleeping town and set forth.

	My birthday began with the water-
	Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
	Above the farms and the white horses
	And I rose
	In rainy autumn
	And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
	High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
	Over the border
	And the gates
	Of the town closed as the town awoke.

	A springful of larks in a rolling
	Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
	Blackbirds and the sun of October
	Summery
	On the hill’s shoulder,
	Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
	Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
	To the rain wringing
	Wind blow cold
	In the wood faraway under me.

	Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
	And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
	With its horns through mist and the castle
	Brown as owls
	But all the gardens
	Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
	Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
	There could I marvel
	My birthday
	Away but the weather turned around.

	It turned away from the blithe country
	And down the other air and the blue altered sky
	Streamed again a wonder of summer
	With apples
	Pears and red currants
	And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s
	Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
	Through the parables
	Of sun light
	And the legends of the green chapels

	And the twice told fields of infancy
	That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
	These were the woods the river and sea
	Where a boy
	In the listening
	Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
	To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
	And the mystery
	Sang alive
	Still in the water and singingbirds.

	And there could I marvel my birthday
	Away but the weather turned around. And the true
	Joy of the long dead child sang burning
	In the sun.
	It was my thirtieth
	Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
	Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
	O may my heart’s truth
	Still be sung
	On this high hill in a year’s turning.

W. H. AUDEN from The Sea and the Mirror

	Miranda
	My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely,
	As the poor and sad are real to the good king,
	And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

	Up jumped the Black Man behind the elder tree,
	Turned a somersault and ran away waving;
	My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

	The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body
	Melted into light as water leaves a spring
	And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

	At his crossroads, too, the Ancient prayed for me;
	Down his wasted cheeks tears of joy were running:
	My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

	He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry;
	The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything,
	And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

	So, to remember our changing garden, we
	Are linked as children in a circle dancing:
	My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely,
	And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

RUTH PITTER But for Lust

	But for lust we could be friends,
	On each other’s necks could weep:
	In each other’s arms could sleep
	In the calm the cradle lends:

	Lends awhile, and takes away.
	But for hunger, but for fear,
	Calm could be our day and year
	From the yellow to the grey:

	From the gold to the grey hair,
	But for passion we could rest,
	But for passion we could feast
	On compassion everywhere.

	Even in this night I know
	By the awful living dead,
	By this craving tear I shed,
	Somewhere, somewhere it is so.

WILLIAM EMPSON Let It Go

	It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
	The more things happen to you the more you can’t
	Tell or remember even what they were.

	The contradictions cover such a range.
	The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
	You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.

SAMUEL BECKETT Saint-Lô 1946

	Vire will wind in other shadows
	unborn through the bright ways tremble
	and the old mind ghost-forsaken
	sink into its havoc

KEITH DOUGLAS How to Kill

	Under the parabola of a ball,
	a child turning into a man,
	I looked into the air too long.
	The ball fell in my hand, it sang
	in the closed fist: Open Open
	Behold a gift designed to kill.

	Now in my dial of glass appears
	the soldier who is going to die.
	He smiles, and moves about in ways
	his mother knows, habits of his.
	The wires touch his face: I cry
	NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears

	and look, has made a man of dust
	of a man of flesh. This sorcery
	I do. Being damned, I am amused
	to see the centre of love diffused
	and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
	How easy it is to make a ghost.

	The weightless mosquito touches
	her tiny shadow on the stone,
	and with how like, how infinite
	a lightness, man and shadow meet.
	They fuse. A shadow is a man
	when the mosquito death approaches.

1949 EDWIN MUIR The Interrogation

	We could have crossed the road but hesitated,
	And then came the patrol;
	The leader conscientious and intent,
	The men surly, indifferent.
	While we stood by and waited
	The interrogation began. He says the whole
	Must come out now, who, what we are,
	Where we have come from, with what purpose, whose
	Country or camp we plot for or betray.
	Question on question.
	We have stood and answered through the standing day
	And watched across the road beyond the hedge
	The careless lovers in pairs go by,
	Hand linked in hand, wandering another star,
	So near we could shout to them. We cannot choose
	Answer or action here,
	Though still the careless lovers saunter by
	And the thoughtless field is near.
	We are on the very edge,
	Endurance almost done,
	And still the interrogation is going on.

MARION ANGUS Alas! Poor Queen 1950

	She was skilled in music and the dance
	And the old arts of love
	At the court of the poisoned rose
	And the perfumed glove,
	And gave her beautiful hand
	To the pale Dauphin
	A triple crown to win –
	And she loved little dogs
	And parrots
	And red-legged partridges
	And the golden fishes of the Duc de Guise
	And a pigeon with a blue ruff
	She had from Monsieur d’Elbœuf.

	Master John Knox was no friend to her;
	She spoke him soft and kind,
	Her honeyed words were Satan’s lure
	The unwary soul to bind
	‘Good sir, doth a lissome shape
	And a comely face
	Offend your God His Grace
	Whose Wisdom maketh these
	Golden fishes of the Duc de Guise?’

	She rode through Liddesdale with a song;
	‘Ye streams sae wondrous strang,
	Oh, mak’ me a wrack as I come back
	But spare me as I gang,’
	While a hill-bird cried and cried
	Like a spirit lost
	By the grey storm-wind tost.
	Consider the way she had to go.
	Think of the hungry snare,
	The net she herself had woven,
	Aware or unaware,
	Of the dancing feet grown still,
	The blinded eyes –
	Queens should be cold and wise,
	And she loved little things,
	Parrots
	And red-legged partridges
	And the golden fishes of the Duc de Guise
	And the pigeon with the blue ruff
	She had from Monsieur d’Elbœuf.

STEVIE SMITH Pad, Pad

	I always remember your beautiful flowers
	And the beautiful kimono you wore
	When you sat on the couch
	With that tigerish crouch
	And told me you loved me no more.

	What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind
	All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.
	Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
	The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.

1951 DYLAN THOMAS Over Sir John’s Hill

	Over Sir John’s hill,
	The hawk on fire hangs still;
	In a hoisted cloud, at drop of dusk, he pulls to his claws
	And gallows, up the rays of his eyes the small birds of the bay
	And the shrill child’s play
	Wars
	Of the sparrows and such who swansing, dusk, in wrangling hedges.
	And blithely they squawk
	To fiery tyburn over the wrestle of elms until
	The flash the noosed hawk
	Crashes, and slowly the fishing holy stalking heron
	In the river Towy below bows his tilted headstone.

	Flash, and the plumes crack,
	And a black cap of Jack-
	Daws Sir John’s just hill dons, and again the gulled birds hare
	To the hawk on fire, the halter height, over Towy’s fins,
	In a whack of wind.
	There
	Where the elegiac fisherbird stabs and paddles
	In the pebbly dab filled
	Shallow and sedge, and ‘dilly dilly,’ calls the loft hawk,
	‘Come and be killed.’
	I open the leaves of the water at a passage
	Of psalms and shadows among the pincered sandcrabs prancing

	And read, in a shell,
	Death clear as a buoy’s bell:
	All praise of the hawk on fire in hawk-eyed dusk be sung,
	When his viperish fuse hangs looped with flames under the brand
	Wing, and blest shall
	Young
	Green chickens of the bay and bushes cluck, ‘dilly dilly,
	Come let us die.’
	We grieve as the blithe birds, never again, leave shingle and elm,
	The heron and I,
	I young Aesop fabling to the near night by the dingle
	Of eels, saint heron hymning in the shell-hung distant

	Crystal harbour vale
	Where the sea cobbles sail,
	And wharves of water where the walls dance and the white cranes stilt.

	It is the heron and I, under judging Sir John’s elmed
	Hill, tell-tale the knelled
	Guilt
	Of the led-astray birds whom God, for their breast of whistles,
	Have mercy on.
	God in his whirlwind silence save, who marks the sparrows hail,
	For their souls’ song.
	Now the heron grieves in the weeded verge. Through windows
	Of dusk and water I see the tilting whispering

	Heron, mirrored, go,
	As the snapt feathers snow,
	Fishing in the tear of the Towy. Only a hoot owl
	Hollows, a grassblade blown in cupped hands, in the looted elms,
	And no green cocks or hens
	Shout
	Now on Sir John’s hill. The heron, ankling the scaly
	Lowlands of the waves,
	Makes all the music; and I who hear the tune of the slow,
	Wear-willow river, grave,
	Before the lunge of the night, the notes on this time-shaken
	Stone for the sake of the souls of the slain birds sailing.