I
They have been long on this earth
But they have not been able to make much of life.
And now Death is at hand.
Once they held that Doom was far away,
And graced their hearts with ease.
But now a shadow, not of the sun, hails on them.
It has come home to stay.
To their children life is a violent experience now.
Touched but lightly by family and fireside
These fledglings are old enough to know better
Than what old birds in their fouled nest have to teach.
With their innate love of values, not their fathers’
Their sons have hiked their faith to what seems to be
a baffle of their fathers’ faith.
The fathers have had faith to build houses, come home to
roost now.
Empty of children.
They have had faith to grow food, to put shadows into
the mouths of their children.
The children have given all to travel the road of
same ideas
And midmost of the track find it fudge.
Silence is astir in homes of fathers.
They have wandered about places, moralised their days out of
possible aberrations;
They have worked, been paid for, and voted for the purple’s man,
Have read to know; have cursed; have not cared a
Tinker’s curse for the spirit when the letter was gay;
Have given rope enough to the sanctity of honest sex;
But is has not been a furlough in Heaven for them
to have been through all this for a lifetime.
Out there on the streets of the city
They are dancing on their graves,
Out beyond it the read the landscape of the dead.
Their experience, knowledge, women, autumnal crops
Are pitched forward to fall across the semblance
of a hope;
We hope there is hope yet; there is hope.
II
As we look on, looms 1944 before us
Soughing like wind on sands.
Sunk within themselves apart, men stare straight in front of them
They seed on the vagueness of their hearts;
Time is a grey wood to them, a grove of gallows-tress.
Which, nonetheless, would sing as a green deodar (?) grotto-
Had they known that it is not for history to always ache to the bone,
But that there is hope as men have known more & wondered more.
But these people have been taught by time to save their pleasures.
They don’t know if lite would have the laugh of them in the end.
Now they draw together in fear; fear gone, are loosened up.
These men have long been in our land,
Have seen how our heroes have given hostages to fortune,
And have been beaten by reality.
In the darkness of our fields
The far year has no guts in it.
Put in the hears of our cities
Are the men who have created nothing,
And don’t know it.
The moving tunes come on them unawares,-
Come on congenital calm they can’t put away.
Matter of habit with them to sleep,
Rise & sleop as a matter of right.
From all this grow clamour, fear, sick heart,
wasted breath, split & fall.
III
Has the will been awakened?
Do we get the common people today as becoming
more & more the great book of the people?
They seek love and wisdom?
They have hoodwinked,- or, moralised their moments
Out of blood, lechery vandalism, lie & terror?
Ah. Common people,
Common man, common woman.
Fresher than blades of grass is woman;
And man, dead & unborn, nobler than rivers.
The sunlit Horials, high above the nuzzles of cannons
Hold the freedom of their will to quit the skyline of lost rhythms-
And fare on to a great, noble blue.
Favourable winds and our tenderness follow them.
With all their airiness they are no more than birds,
Give room to millions as round their path the sun falls
Catching their dishonoured shrouds and unfaltering
headpieces into yet another sun.
Wind stirs
With gentle head over the grass;
Minds us of the grass that is green.
Dim images, before we can make them, look into
our eyes as chiming rivers of the earth.
Quickened by many more suns than we have seen
The waters of joy pass away into image
Of man’s death, disease, dereliction and strain.-
Hoping to rise refreshed from the wastes of 1944.
Man seeks love & wisdom?
He has hoodwinked?- Or, moraliscd his moments
Out of blood, lechery, vandalism, lie & terror?
Has the will been awakened?
Do we see the common people today as singing masters
of Time & Times.