Louis MacNeice

And this, ladies and gentlemen, whom I am not in fact Conducting, was his office all those minutes ago,
This man you never heard of.
These are the bills In the intray, the ash in the ashtray, the grey memoranda stacked Against him, the…

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp.
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind.
Outdoors the wind.

The room was suddenly rich and the great
bay-window
Spawning snow and pink roses against
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

Only let it form within his hands once more - The moment cradled like a brandy glass.
Sitting alone in the empty dining hall… From the chandeliers the snow begins to fall Piling around carafes and table legs And chokes the passage of the…

A spiral of green hay on the end of a rake:
The moment is sweat and sun-prick---children and old women Big in a tiny field, midgets against the mountain,
So toy-like yet so purposed you could take This for the Middle Ages.

In my childhood trees were green And there was plenty to be seen. Come back early or never come. My father made the walls resound,
He wore his collar the wrong way round. Come back early or never come. My mother wore a yellow…

The sunlight on the
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the
Within its nets of gold;

Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car For this is Sunday morning,
Fate's great bazaar;

The Junes were free and full, driving through
Roads, the mudguards brushing the cowparsley,
Through fields of mustard and under boldly
Mays and

I am not yet born;
O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or theclub-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.

Forty-two years ago (to me if to no one
The number is of some interest) it was a brilliant starry
And the westward train was empty and had no
So darting from side to side I could catch the unwonted

Well,
I dreamt it was a hot day, the territorials Were out on melting asphalt under the howitzers,
The brass music bounced on the houses.
Come I heard cry as it were a water-nymph, come and fulfil me And I sped floating, my feet…

Rows of books around me stand,
Fence me in on either hand;
Through that forest of dead wordsI would hunt the living birds -So I write these lines for
Who have felt the death-wish too,

This brand of soap has the same smell as once in the
House he visited when he was eight: the walls of the bathroom
To reveal a lawn where a great yellow ball rolls back through a hoop To rest at the head of a mallet held in the hands of…