I sit in one of the
On Fifty-second
Uncertain and
As the clever hopes
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and
Circulate over the
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship
Unearth the whole
From Luther until
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at
What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:
I and the public
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides
All that a speech can
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral
Where blind skyscrapers
Their full height to
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's
And the international wrong.
Faces along the
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions
To make this fort
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant
Important Persons
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky
About
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the
Of each woman and each
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative
Into the ethical
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the
Of the sensual
And the lie of
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of
Flash out wherever the
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
