After

THE sky is very blue to-day, And the soft turf yields To each well-fitting shoe; so they Bring their bananas and sandwiches To munch on the battle-fields. O, why has Nature taken such a sheen, Why does the grass grow green, So cruelly green? O, surely it must wither in the spate Of clashing contumacious worlds of agony and hate! How can the sun keep pace so? why not reel, White steel, Or stagger ankleted with yawning fire Neath the tremendous byre? But the absurd courageous clouds Look on, look on In bustling business crowds, They con A Masse-Mensch imaginary power. They do not cower Before the charabancs’ toot toot a toot And men who bring their sandwiches to boot, And break beer-bottles where men’s souls were torn By invisible billion hands ... where agony was born. There is a lady in an orange gown. (Did not those shrieks hang airily down, Suspended for eternity to hear, A thousand tired stars over a shattered town Not formed enough to speak, but formed enough to shriek And formed enough to make men fear?) Not so. The roses dangle deep asleep, Men play Bo-peep With poor worn-out banalities, Sentimentalities, Tepid-with-languor-lilies And daffodillies. We shall have each wind-melody dictated And by Puccini orchestrated, And from innumerable Noah’s arks Those little gasps of men make little gasp remarks And puff Abdullas in their elegant central parks. A cross ... a cross ... and row on row the same Small cross without a name, Each silhouette so slim And, God, how ghastlily trim! And down beneath the skeletons are piled. ... But now a child Discovering some fraction of a bomb, Adventure-wild, Performs a jig with exquisite aplomb Over, who knows? a corpse or mandrake root (What matters it?) the charabancs toot-toot, The sky’s so very blue to-day And the soft turf yields To each well-fitting shoe: and they Bring their bananas and sandwiches To munch on the battle-fields.