A LITTLE ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH POETS
93
And when the clockwork world of alarms
iS
done,
I shall come out and lie naked and sweet in the sun.
Gazing at those fantastic Harlequin flies
Swivelling and shimmering on rubbish heaps in August
I
think
I live like them, and when one dies
I feel its tremor in my own bones' dust.
But then the luminous comets of the ilight
The glow-worm and the glitter-fly make me bright.
,..---
.
Here as I stand m the garbage of a world,
The broken pillars and arches on my shoulder,
Chaos of spiritual collapse wrecked and whirled
Like rags and leaves around me, I shudder.
Standing I see the million major men
Lying or flying from the end of man.
I go among the many broken and fallen,
Lying in angular attitudes of agony,
Cleansing their cracks with words of anger,
Laving their hurt with my heart's pollen:
It is a dream-1 am myself those ones
On whom the world has fallen its tons.
Then a gentle ghost swings up to me,
Admonishing like a windy waving tree:
Fellow, it said, follow what I now speak,
There is one one to help restore the wreck:
I'm Einstein and Aeschylus and I'm Truth–
Keep me in mind, and suffer ruth for me.
Ky
rie
Is man's old lust to war insatiable? There is
GEORGE BARKER
Grief in the blow that shatters the innocent face.
Pain blots out clearer sense. And pleasure suffers
The trial thrust of death in even the bride's embrace.
The black catastrophe that may lay waste our worlds
May be unconsciously desired. Fear masks our face:
And tears as warm and cruelly wrung as blood
Are
falling even in the mouth of our grimace.
