The Landscape near an Aerodrome

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.