A reactionary tract for the times

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

Ares at last has quit the field,

The bloodstains on the bushes yield

To seeping showers,

And in their convalescent state

The fractured towns associate

With summer flowers.

Encamped upon the college plain

Raw veterans already train

As freshman forces;

Instructors with sarcastic tongue

Shepherd the battle-weary young

Through basic courses.

Among bewildering appliances

For mastering the arts and sciences

They stroll or run,

And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter

Are shot to pieces by the shorter

Poems of Donne.

Professors back from secret missions

Resume their proper eruditions,

Though some regret it;

They liked their dictaphones a lot,

They met some big wheels, and do not

Let you forget it.

But Zeus' inscrutable decree

Permits the will-to-disagree

To be pandemic,

Ordains that vaudeville shall preach

And every commencement speech

Be a polemic.

Let Ares doze, that other war

Is instantly declared once more

'Twixt those who follow

Precocious Hermes all the way

And those who without qualms obey

Pompous Apollo.

Brutal like all Olympic games,

Though fought with similes and Christian names

And less dramatic,

This dialectic strife between

The civil gods is just as mean,

And more fanatic.

What high immortals do in mirth

Is life and death on Middle Earth;

Their a-historic

Antipathy forever gripes

All ages and somatic types,

The sophomoric

Who face the future's darkest hints

With giggles or with prairie squints

As stout as Cortez,

And those who like myself turn pale

As we approach with ragged sail

The fattening forties.

The sons of Hermes love to play,

And only do their best when they

Are told they oughtn't;

Apollo's children never shrink

From boring jobs but have to think

Their work important.

Related by antithesis,

A compromise between us is

Impossible;

Respect perhaps but friendship never:

Falstaff the fool confronts forever

The prig Prince Hal.

If he would leave the self alone,

Apollo's welcome to the throne,

Fasces and falcons;

He loves to rule, has always done it;

The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,

Be like the Balkans.

But jealous of our god of dreams,

His common-sense in secret schemes

To rule the heart;

Unable to invent the lyre,

Creates with simulated fire

Official art.

And when he occupies a college,

Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;

He pays particular

Attention to Commercial Thought,

Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport,

In his curricula.

Athletic, extrovert and crude,

For him, to work in solitude

Is the offence,

The goal a populous Nirvana:

His shield bears this device: Mens sana

Qui mal y pense.

To-day his arms, we must confess,

From Right to Left have met success,

His banners wave

From Yale to Princeton, and the news

From Broadway to the Book Reviews

Is very grave.

His radio Homers all day long

In over-Whitmanated song

That does not scan,

With adjectives laid end to end,

Extol the doughnut and commend

The Common Man.

His, too, each homely lyric thing

On sport or spousal love or spring

Or dogs or dusters,

Invented by some court-house bard

For recitation by the yard

In filibusters.

To him ascend the prize orations

And sets of fugal variations

On some folk-ballad,

While dietitians sacrifice

A glass of prune-juice or a nice

Marsh-mallow salad.

Charged with his compound of sensational

Sex plus some undenominational

Religious matter,

Enormous novels by co-eds

Rain down on our defenceless heads

Till our teeth chatter.

In fake Hermetic uniforms

Behind our battle-line, in swarms

That keep alighting,

His existentialists declare

That they are in complete despair,

Yet go on writing.

No matter; He shall be defied;

White Aphrodite is on our side:

What though his threat

To organize us grow more critical?

Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical,

Shall beat him yet.

Lone scholars, sniping from the walls

Of learned periodicals,

Our facts defend,

Our intellectual marines,

Landing in little magazines,

Capture a trend.

By night our student Underground

At cocktail parties whisper round

From ear to ear;

Fat figures in the public eye

Collapse next morning, ambushed by

Some witty sneer.

In our morale must lie our strength:

So, that we may behold at length

Routed Apollo's

Battalions melt away like fog,

Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,

Which runs as follows:-

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,

Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis

On education,

Thou shalt not worship projects nor

Shalt thou or thine bow down before

Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires

Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,

Nor with compliance

Take any test. Thou shalt not sit

With statisticians nor commit

A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms

With guys in advertising firms,

Nor speak with such

As read the Bible for its prose,

Nor, above all, make love to those

Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means

Nor on plain water and raw greens.

If thou must choose

Between the chances, choose the odd;

Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

And take short views.

A Walk After Dark

A cloudless night like this

Can set the spirit soaring:

After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

The things I did could not

Be so shocking as they said

If that would still be there

After the shocked were dead.

Now, unready to die

But already at the stage

When one starts to resent the young,

I am glad those points in the sky

May also be counted among

The creatures of Middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night

As more an Old People's Home

Than a shed for a faultless machine,

That the red pre-Cambrian light

Is gone like Imperial Rome

Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like

The stoic manner in which

The classical authors wrote,

Only the young and the rich

Have the nerve or the figure to strike

The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad

Like the past and its wronged again

Whimper and are ignored,

And the truth cannot be hid;

Somebody chose their pain,

What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night

By no established rule,

Some event may already have hurled

Its first little No at the right

Of the laws we accept to school

Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,

Unconscious of final ends,

As I walk home to bed,

Asking what judgement waits

My person, all my friends,

And these United States.

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

The Shield of Achilles

She looked over his shoulder

For vines and olive trees,

Marble well-governed cities

And ships upon untamed seas,

But there on the shining metal

His hands had put instead

An artificial wilderness

And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,

No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,

Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,

Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood

An unintelligible multitude,

A million eyes, a million boots in line,

Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face

Proved by statistics that some cause was just

In tones as dry and level as the place:

No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;

Column by column in a cloud of dust

They marched away enduring a belief

Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder

For ritual pieties,

White flower-garlanded heifers,

Libation and sacrifice,

But there on the shining metal

Where the altar should have been,

She saw by his flickering forge-light

Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot

Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)

And sentries sweated for the day was hot:

A crowd of ordinary decent folk

Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke

As three pale figures were led forth and bound

To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all

That carries weight and always weighs, the same

Lay in the hands of others; they were small

And could not hope for help and no help came:

What their foes liked to do was done, their shame

Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride

And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder

For athletes at their games,

Men and women in a dance

Moving their sweet limbs

Quick, quick, to music,

But there on the shining shield

His hands had set no dancing-floor

But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,

Loitered about that vacancy; a bird

Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,

Were axioms to him, who'd never heard

Of any world where promises were kept,

Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,

Hephaestos, hobbled away,

Thetis of the shining breasts

Cried out in dismay

At what the god had wrought

To please her son, the strong

Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles

Who would not live long.

Friday's Child

(In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

martyred at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945)

He told us we were free to choose

But, children as we were, we thought-

"Paternal Love will only use

Force in the last resort

On those too bumptious to repent."

Accustomed to religious dread,

It never crossed our minds He meant

Exactly what He said.

Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,

But it seems idle to discuss

If anger or compassion leaves

The bigger bangs to us.

What reverence is rightly paid

To a Divinity so odd

He lets the Adam whom He made

Perform the Acts of God?

It might be jolly if we felt

Awe at this Universal Man

(When kings were local, people knelt);

Some try to, but who can?

The self-observed observing Mind

We meet when we observe at all

Is not alariming or unkind

But utterly banal.

Though instruments at Its command

Make wish and counterwish come true,

It clearly cannot understand

What It can clearly do.

Since the analogies are rot

Our senses based belief upon,

We have no means of learning what

Is really going on,

And must put up with having learned

All proofs or disproofs that we tender

Of His existence are returned

Unopened to the sender.

Now, did He really break the seal

And rise again? We dare not say;

But conscious unbelievers feel

Quite sure of Judgement Day.

Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,

As dead as we shall ever be,

Speaks of some total gain or loss,

And you and I are free

To guess from the insulted face

Just what Appearances He saves

By suffering in a public place

A death reserved for slaves.

Thanksgiving for a Habitat

Nobody I know would like to be buried

with a silver cocktail-shaker,

a transistor radio and a strangled

daily help, or keep his word because

of a great-great-grandmother who got laid

by a sacred beast. Only a press lord

could have built San Simeon: no unearned income

can buy us back the gait and gestures

to manage a baroque staircase, or the art

of believing footmen don't hear

human speech. (In adulterine castles

our half-strong might hang their jackets

while mending their lethal bicycle-chains:

luckily, there are not enough

crags to go round.) Still, Hetty Pegler's Tump

is worth a visit, so is Schönbrunn,

to look at someone's idea of the body

that should have been his, as the flesh

Mum formulated shouldn't: that whatever

he does or feels in the mood for,

stock-taking, horse-play, worship, making love,

he stays the same shape, disgraces

a Royal I. To be over-admired is not

good enough: although a fine figure

is rare in either sex, others like it

have existed before. One may

be a Proustian snob or a sound Jacksonian

democrat, but which of us wants

to be touched inadvertently, even

by his beloved? We know all about graphs

and Darwin, enormous rooms no longer

superhumanise, but earnest

city-planners are mistaken: a pen

for a rational animal

is no fitting habitat for Adam's

sovereign clone. I, a transplant

from overseas, at last am dominant

over three acres and a blooming

conurbation of country lives, few of whom

I shall ever meet, and with fewer

converse. Linnaeus recoiled from the Amphibia

as a naked gruesome rabble,

Arachnids give me the shudders, but fools

who deface their emblem of guilt

are germane to Hitler: the race of spiders

shall be allowed their webs. I should like

to be to my water-brethren as a spell

of fine weather: Many are stupid,

and some, maybe, are heartless, but who is not

vulnerable, easy to scare,

and jealous of his privacy? (I am glad

the blackbird, for instance, cannot

tell if I'm talking English, German or

just typewriting: that what he utters

I may enjoy as an alien rigmarole.) I ought

to outlast the limber dragonflies

as the muscle-bound firs are certainly

going to outlast me: I shall not end

down any oesophagus, though I may succumb

to a filter-passing predator,

shall, anyhow, stop eating, surrender my smidge

of nitrogen to the World Fund

with a drawn-out Oh (unless at the nod

of some jittery commander

I be translated in a nano-second

to a c.c. of poisonous nothing

in a giga-death). Should conventional

blunderbuss war and its routiers

invest my bailiwick, I shall of course

assume the submissive posture:

but men are not wolves and it probably

won't help. Territory, status,

and love, sing all the birds, are what matter:

what I dared not hope or fight for

is, in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft

where I needn't, ever, be at home to

those I am not at home with, not a cradle,

a magic Eden without clocks,

and not a windowless grave, but a place

I may go both in and out of.

The Common Life

(for Chester Kallman)

A living-room, the catholic area you

(Thou, rather) and I may enter

without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts

each visitor with a style,

a secular faith: he compares its dogmas

with his, and decides whether

he would like to see more of us. (Spotless rooms

where nothing's left lying about

chill me, so do cups used for ash-trays or smeared

with lip-stick: the homes I warm to,

though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling

of bills being promptly settled

with cheques that don't bounce.) There's no We at an instant,

only Thou and I, two regions

of protestant being which nowhere overlap:

a room is too small, therefore,

if its occupants cannot forget at will

that they are not alone, too big

if it gives them any excuse in a quarrel

for raising their voices. What,

quizzing ours, would Sherlock Holmes infer? Plainly,

ours is a sitting culture

in a generation which prefers comfort

(or is forced to prefer it)

to command, would rather incline its buttocks

on a well-upholstered chair

than the burly back of a slave: a quick glance

at book-titles would tell him

that we belong to the clerisy and spend much

on our food. But could he read

what our prayers and jokes are about, what creatures

frighten us most, or what names

head our roll-call of persons we would least like

to go to bed with? What draws

singular lives together in the first place,

loneliness, lust, ambition,

or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop

or murder one another

clear enough: how they create, though, a common world

between them, like Bombelli's

impossible yet useful numbers, no one

has yet explained. Still, they do

manage to forgive impossible behavior,

to endure by some miracle

conversational tics and larval habits

without wincing (were you to die,

I should miss yours). It's a wonder that neither

has been butchered by accident,

or, as lots have, silently vanished into

History's criminal noise

unmourned for, but that, after twenty-four years,

we should sit here in Austria

as cater-cousins, under the glassy look

of a Naples Bambino,

the portrayed regards of Strauss and Stravinsky,

doing British cross-word puzzles,

is very odd indeed. I'm glad the builder gave

our common-room small windows

through which no observed outsider can observe us:

every home should be a fortress,

equipped with all the very latest engines

for keeping Nature at bay,

versed in all ancient magic, the arts of quelling

the Dark Lord and his hungry

animivorous chimaeras. (Any brute

can buy a machine in a shop,

but the sacred spells are secret to the kind,

and if power is what we wish

they won't work.) The ogre will come in any case:

so Joyce has warned us. Howbeit,

fasting or feasting, we both know this: without

the Spirit we die, but life

without the Letter is in the worst of taste,

and always, though truth and love

can never really differ, when they seem to,

the subaltern should be truth.

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master Speech.

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

* 1968 *

Moon Landing

It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for

so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure

it would not have occurred to women

to think worth while, made possible only

because we like huddling in gangs and knowing

the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness

hurrah the deed, although the motives

that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.

A grand gesture. But what does it period?

What does it osse? We were always adroiter

with objects than lives, and more facile

at courage than kindness: from the moment

the first flint was flaked this landing was merely

a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,

still don't fit us exactly, modern

only in this-our lack of decorum.

Homer's heroes were certainly no braver

than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector

was excused the insult of having

his valor covered by television.

Worth going to see? I can well believe it.

Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert

and was not charmed: give me a watered

lively garden, remote from blatherers

about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where

on August mornings I can count the morning

glories where to die has a meaning,

and no engine can shift my perspective.

Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens

as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at,

Her Old Man, made of grit not protein,

still visits my Austrian several

with His old detachment, and the old warnings

still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to

an ugly finish, Irreverence

is a greater oaf than Superstition.

Our apparatniks will continue making

the usual squalid mess called History:

all we can pray for is that artists,

chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

River Profile

Our body is a moulded river

NOVALIS

Out of a bellicose fore-time, thundering

head-on collisions of cloud and rock in an

up-thrust, crevasse-and-avalanche, troll country,

deadly to breathers,

it whelms into our picture below the melt-line,

where tarns lie frore under frowning cirques, goat-bell,

wind-breaker, fishing-rod, miner's-lamp country,

already at ease with

the mien and gestures that become its kindness,

in streams, still anonymous, still jumpable,

flows as it should through any declining country

in probing spirals.

Soon of a size to be named and the cause of

dirty in-fighting among rival agencies,

down a steep stair, penstock-and-turbine country,

it plunges ram-stam,

to foam through a wriggling gorge incised in softer

strata, hemmed between crags that nauntle heaven,

robber-baron, tow-rope, portage-way country,

nightmare of merchants.

Disemboguing from foothills, now in hushed meanders,

now in riffling braids, it vaunts across a senile

plain, well-entered, chateau-and-cider-press country,

its regal progress

gallanted for a while by quibbling poplars,

then by chimneys: led off to cool and launder

retort, steam-hammer, gasometer country,

it changes color.

Polluted, bridged by girders, banked by concrete,

now it bisects a polyglot metropolis,

ticker-tape, taxi, brothel, foot-lights country,

à-la-mode always.

Broadening or burrowing to the moon's phases,

turbid with pulverised wastemantle, on through

flatter, duller, hotter, cotton-gin country

it scours, approaching

the tidal mark where it puts off majesty,

disintegrates, and through swamps of a delta,

punting-pole, fowling-piece, oyster-tongs country,

wearies to its final

act of surrender, effacement, atonement

in a huge amorphous aggregate no cuddled

attractive child ever dreams of, non-country,

image of death as

a spherical dew-drop of life. Unlovely

monsters, our tales believe, can be translated

too, even as water, the selfless mother

of all especials.

A New Year Greeting

After an article by Mary J. Marples

in Scientific American, January, 1969

On this day tradition allots

to taking stock of our lives,

my greetings to all of you, Yeasts,

Bacteria, Viruses,

Aerobics and Anaerobics:

A Very Happy New Year

to all for whom my ectoderm

is as Middle-Earth to me.

For creatures your size I offer

a free choice of habitat,

so settle yourselves in the zone

that suits you best, in the pools

of my pores or the tropical

forests of arm-pit and crotch,

in the deserts of my fore-arms,

or the cool woods of my scalp.

Build colonies: I will supply

adequate warmth and moisture,

the sebum and lipids you need,

on condition you never

do me annoy with your presence,

but behave as good guests should,

not rioting into acne

or athlete's-foot or a boil.

Does my inner weather affect

the surfaces where you live?

Do unpredictable changes

record my rocketing plunge

from fairs when the mind is in tift

and relevant thoughts occur

to fouls when nothing will happen

and no one calls and it rains.

I should like to think that I make

a not impossible world,

but an Eden it cannot be:

my games, my purposive acts,

may turn to catastrophes there.

If you were religious folk,

how would your dramas justify

unmerited suffering?

By what myths would your priests account

for the hurricanes that come

twice every twenty-four hours,

each time I dress or undress,

when, clinging to keratin rafts,

whole cities are swept away

to perish in space, or the Flood

that scalds to death when I bathe?

Then, sooner or later, will dawn

a Day of Apocalypse,

when my mantle suddenly turns

too cold, too rancid, for you,

appetising to predators

of a fiercer sort, and I

am stripped of excuse and nimbus,

a Past, subject to Judgement.

"About suffering they were never wrong,"

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just

walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the

torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how

everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman

may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the

sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into

the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must

have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

ARCHAEOLOGY

The archaeologist's spade

delves into dwellings

vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence

of life-ways no one

would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much

to say that he can prove:

the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,

but guessing is always

more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,

from fear or affection,

has always graved His dead.

What disastered a city,

volcanic effusion,

fluvial outrage,

or a human horde,

agog for slaves and glory,

is visually patent,

and we're pretty sure that,

as soon as palaces were built,

their rulers

though gluttoned on sex

and blanded by flattery,

must often have yawned.

But do grain-pits signify

a year of famine?

Where a coin-series

peters out, should we infer

some major catastrophe?

Maybe. Maybe.

From murals and statues

we get a glimpse of what

the Old Ones bowed down to,

but cannot conceit

in what situations they blushed

or shrugged their shoulders.

Poets have learned us their myths,

but just how did They take them?

That's a stumper.

When Norsemen heard thunder,

did they seriously believe

Thor was hammering?

No, I'd say: I'd swear

that men have always lounged in myths

as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest

has been to grant excuses

for ritual actions.

Only in rites

can we renounce our oddities

and be truly entired.

Not that all rites

should be equally fonded:

some are abominable.

There's nothing the Crucified

would like less

than butchery to appease Him.

ROMAN WALL BLUES

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,

My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,

I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;

There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;

I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I'm a veteran with only one eye

I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

October 1937

EPITAPH ON A TYRANT

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.[259]

January 1939

REFUGEE BLUES

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:

Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said,

"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year:

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;

"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":

O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand windows and a thousand doors:

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

March 1939

VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.

An exile making watches glanced up as he passed

And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,

A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell

Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.

The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris where his enemies

Whispered that he was wicked, in an upright chair

A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,

"Nothing is better than life". But was it? Yes, the fight

Against the false and the unfair

Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilize.

Cajoling, scolding, scheming, cleverest of them all,

He'd had the other children in a holy war

Against the unfamous grown-ups; and like a child, been sly

And humble, when there was occasion for

The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,

But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:

Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest

Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,

And only himself to count upon.

Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;

Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.

Night fell and made him think of women: Lust

Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool,

How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;

Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.

He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,

It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,

Earthquakes and executions: Soon he would be dead,

And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses

Itching to boil their children. Only his verses

Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,

The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

February 1939

IF I COULD TELL YOU

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play?

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more then I can say,

If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,

There must be reason why the leaves decay;

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,

The vision seriously intends to stay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,

And all the brooks and soldiers run away;

Will time say nothing but I told you so?

If I could tell you I would let you know.