284
PARTISAN REVIEW
And they worshipped children and simple flowers,
And opened slum windows onto angels
Who climbed up all the sooty steeples,
Like steeple jacks, or weeping chimney sweeps.
And they sang: "We souls of the abyss,
Dancing in frozen peace of upper air,
Naively familiar with the stars and angels,
We say: 'Rejoice in the abyss!
For hollow
is
the centre of the skull,
The rumour in the rose, the vacuum
Drifting under pale gold of Saint Paul's Cross.
Unless your lives accept the space of death
At the centre of your building and your loves,
Within the bells of flowers and bells of towers,
All human aims are hatred and denial
Each life is lived upon the death of others,
And the terrible averted face
Of every man and woman, cuts, like a sword,
The smile from every neighbour face.' "
STEPHEN SPENDER
THREE POEMS FROM A TEXT: ISAIAH LXI: 1-3
I.
Beauty for Ashes
All day I trespassed on my friend's new death,
and talked of it with strangers to give it handle,
the skill of a firm pressure in the handshake,
felt but not regarded. "My friend was killed!"
I had the voice but not the throat for gesture,
the seething in me was beneath control.
"Was killed in Italy on a high road."
I thought of dust, and rock, and hanging trees.
"Never was God revealed upon that road,
never was man saved in that high place!"
