To finish that which they did not begin:
Their fate must always be the same as yours,
To suffer the loss they were afraid of, yes,
Holders of one position, wrong for years.
November 1929 ,,
10 -
Consider this and in our time
As the hawk sees it or the helmeted airman:
The clouds rift suddenly—look there
At cigarette-end smouldering on a border
At the first garden party of the year.
Pass on, admire the view of the massif
Through plate-glass windows of the Sport Hotel;
Join there the insufficient units
Dangerous, easy, in furs, in uniform
And constellated at reserved tables
Supplied with feelings by an efficient band
Relayed elsewhere to farmers and their dogs
Sitting in kitchens in the stormy fens.
Long ago, supreme Antagonist,
More powerful than the great northern whale
Ancient and sorry at life's- limiting defect,
In Cornwall, Mendip, or the Pennine moor
Your comments on the highborn mining-captains,
Found they no answer, made them wish to die
—Lie since in barrows out of harm.
You talk to your admirers every day
By silted harbours, derelict works,
In strangled orchards, and the silent comb Where dogs have worried or a bird was shot. Order the ill that they attack at once: Visit the ports and, interrupting The leisurely conversation in the bar Within a stone's throw of the sunlit water, Beckon'your chosen out. Summon
Those handsome and diseased youngsters, those women
Your solitary agents in the country parishes;
And mobilise the powerful forces latent
In soils that make the farmer brutal
In the infected sinus, and the eyes of stoats.
Then, ready, start your rumour, soft
But horrifying in its capacity to disgust
Which, spreading magnified, shall come to be
A polar peril, a prodigious alarm,
Scattering the people, as torn-up paper
Rags and utensils in a sudden gust,
Seized with immeasurable neurotic dread.
Financier, leaving your little room Where the money is made but not spent, You'll need your typist and your boy no more; The game is up for you and for the others, Who, thinking, pace in slippers on the lawns. Of College Quad or Cathedral Close, Who are born nurses, who live in shorts Sleeping with people and playing fives. Seekers after happiness, all who follow The convolutions of your simple wish, It is later than you think; nearer that day Far other than that distant afternoon Amid rustle of frocks and stamping feet They gave the prizes to the ruined boys. You cannot be away, then, no Not though you pack to leave within an hour, Escaping humming down arterial roads:
The date was yours; the prey to fugues, Irregular breathing and alternate ascendancies After some haunted migratory years To disintegrate on an instant in the explosion of mania Or lapse for ever into a classic fatigue. (
March 1930
11
This lunar beauty Has no history Is complete and early; If beauty later Bear any feature It had a lover And is another.
This like a dream Keeps other time And daytime is The loss of this; For time is inches And the heart's changes Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
But this was never A ghost's endeavour Nor finished this, Was ghost at ease; And till it pass Love shall not near The sweetness here Nor sorrow take His endless look.
April 19 30
To ask the hard question is simple; Asking at meeting
With the simple glance of acquaintance
To what these go
And how these do:
To ask the hard question is simple,
The simple act of the confused will.
But the answer
Is hard and hard to remember:
On steps or on shore
The ears listening
To words at meeting,
The eyes looking
At the hands helping,
Are never sure
Of what they learn
From how these things are done.
And forgetting to listen or see
Makes forgetting easy;
Only remembering the method of remembering, Remembering only in another way, Only the strangely exciting lie, Afraid
To remember what the fish ignored,
How the bird escaped, or if the sheep obeyed.
Till, losing memory, Bird, fish, and sheep are ghostly, And ghosts must do again What gives them pain. Cowardice cries For windy skies, Coldness for water, Obedience for a master.
Shall memory restore
The steps and the shore,
The face and the meeting place;
Shall the bird live,
Shall the fish dive,
And sheep obey
In a sheep's way;
Can love remember
The question and the answer,
For love recover
What has been dark and rich and warm all over?
? August 1930
13
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle. Upon what man it fall In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing, Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face, That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.
There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome.
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him. through doorway voices Of new men making another love.
Save him from hostile capture, From sudden tiger's spring at corner; Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.
August 1930
14
What's in your mind, my dove, my coney; Do thoughts grow like feathers, the dead end of life; Is it making of love or counting of money, Or raid on the jewels, the plans of a thief?
Open your eyes, my dearest dallier; Let hunt with your hands for escaping me; Go through the motions of exploring the familiar; Stand on the brink of the warm white day.
Rise with the wind, my great big serpent; Silence the birds and darken the air; Change me with terror, alive in a moment; Strike for the heart and have me there.
November 1930
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider, "That valley is fatal where furnaces burn, Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden, That gap is the grave where the tall return."
"O doyou imagine," said fearer to farer, "That dusk will delay on your path to the pass, Your diligent looking discover the lacking Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"
"0 what was that bird," said horror to hearer, "Did you see that shape in the twisted trees? Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly, The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?"
"Out of this house"—said rider to reader "Yours never will"—said farer to fearer "They're looking for you"—said hearer to horror As he left them there, as he left them there.
from "The Orators": October 1931
16
(TO MY PUPILS)
Though aware of our rank and alert to obey orders, Watching with binoculars the movement of the grass for an