The Shapes of Death
Shapes of death haunt life,
Neurosis eclipsing each in special shadow:
Unrequited love not
One’s need to become another’s
Wears black invisibility:
The greed for
Heaps a skyscraper over the breathing ribs:
The speedlines of
Cut their own stalks:
From afar, we watch the best of us –Whose adored desire was to die for the world.
Ambition is my death.
That flat thin flameI feed, that plants my shadow.
This prevents
And offers love of being loved or loving.
The humorous self-forgetful
It hates, demands the slavish
Be built.
Who can
His death’s industry, which when he
Throws up its towers?
And conceals in
The dreams of revolution, the birth of death?
Also the swallows by autumnal
Comfort us with their effortless
In great unguided flight to their complete South.
There on my fancied pyramids they
But for delight, their whole compulsion.
Not teaching me to love, but soothing my eyes;
Not saving me from death, but saving me for speech.
Stephen Spender
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