Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's
Through corridors of light where the hours are
Endless and singing

A stopwatch and an ordnance map
At five a man fell to the
And the watch flew off his
Like a moon struck from the

I stood on a roof top and they wove their
Their murmuring throbbing cage, in the air of blue crystal
I saw them gleam above the town like diamond
Conjoining invisible struts of wire,

The secret of these hills was stone, and
Of that stone made,
And crumbling
That turned on sudden hidden

O night O trembling night O night of sighsO night when my body was a rod O
When my mouth was a vague animal
Pasturing on her flesh O
When the close darkness was a

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

As a child holds a pet,
Arms clutching but with hands that do not join,
And the coiled animal watches the
To outer freedom in animal air,

He will watch the hawk with an indifferent eye Or pitifully;
Nor on those eagles that so feared him, now Will strain his brow;
Weapons men use, stone, sling and strong-thewed bow He will not know
This aristocrat, superb of all insti...

The guns spell money's ultimate
In letters of lead on the spring hillside
But the boy lying dead under the olive
Was too young and too

On the first summer day I lay in the valley
Above rocks the sky sealed my eyes with a
The grass licked my skin
The flowers bound my

Sometimes, apart in sleep, by chance,
You fall out of my arms, alone,
Into the chaos of your separate trance
My eyes gaze through your forehead, through the bone,

Shapes of death haunt life,
Neurosis eclipsing each in special shadow:
Unrequited love not
One’s need to become another’s