386
PARTISAN REVIEW
Julian Symons
THE STATUES IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE
Powerful, the myths stand up into the sky,
Solid and happy, legends of a life
They never knew, in which they did not lie,
Kept faith with friends and always loved their wife.
The politicians, Canning, Peel and Pitt,
Stand rigidly, outlines against the blue;
The eyeholes star, their stone lips wittily
Convey the antique faith, the always true:
'And is not death. Permanent is the wall
That the rich, rising state made out of pain.'
Above the clouds are birds, the bombers feel
For earth, the people run into a pen.
'And handled the abstractions, love and law,
Most skilfully, and for a country's good.'
Newspapers flutter in the wind, the poor
Read about life, and catch a tic of blood.
Immutable and cold in the gold air
The serious statues shame the flowing sun;
They make the people photographs in the square
Whose Desire-to-Be and Will-to-Die are one,
Whose uncertainty is fingers to their claws,
Whose dog-wet eyes their fine grey eyeholes mock,
Whose impermanence shudders away from wars
But breaks like water on these liars' rock.
