More beautiful and soft than any
With burring furred antennae feeling its huge
Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off
Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing
To point the wind.
Gently, broadly, she falls,
Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air.
Lulled by descent, the travellers across
And across feminine land indulging its easy
In miles of softness, now let their eyes trained by
Penetrate through dusk the outskirts of this
Here where industry shows a fraying edge.
Here they may see what is being done.
Beyond the winking masthead
And the landing-ground, they observe the
Of work: chimneys like lank black
Or figures frightening and mad: and squat
With their strange air behind trees, like women's
Shattered by grief.
Here where few
Moan with faint light behind their blinds,
They remark the unhomely sense of complaint, like a
Shut out and shivering at the foreign moon.
In the last sweep of love, they pass over
Behind the aerodrome, where boys play all
Hacking dead grass: whose cries, like wild
Settle upon the nearest
But soon are hid under the loud city.
Then, as they land, they hear the tolling
Reaching across the landscape of hysteria,
To where larger than all the charcoaled
And imaged towers against that dying sky,
Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.
