They look a bit lost, set down In this unamerican place Where natives pass with laws And futures of their own; They are not here because But only just-in-case.
The whore and ne'er-do-well Who pester them with junk In their grubby ways at least Are serving the Social Beast; They neither make nor sell— No wonder they get drunk.
But the ships on the dazzling blue Of the harbor actually gain From having nothing to do; Without a human will To tell them whom to kill Their structures are humane
' And, far from looking lost, Look as if they were meant To be pure abstract design By some master of pattern and line, Certainly worth every cent Of the millions they must have cost.
1951
The Shield of Achilles
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities,
And ships upon untamed seas, 1
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown, ]
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, '
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood i
An unintelligible multitude, ;
A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them. somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, •
Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal I
Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light j
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated, for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same, Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came : What their foes liked to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away; Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long.
'I
1952
72
The Willow-Wren and the Stare
A starling and a willow-wren,
On a may-tree by a weir, Saw them meet and heard him say:
"Dearest of my dear, More lively than these waters chortling
As they leap the dam, My sweetest duck, my precious goose,
My white lascivious lamb." With a smile she listened to him,
Talking to her there: What does he want? said the willow-wren; Much too much, said the stare.
"Forgive these loves who dwell in me,
These brats of greed and fear, The honking bottom-pinching clown,
The snivelling sonneteer, That so, between us, even these,
Who till the grave are mine, For all they fall so short of may,
Dear heart, be still a sign." With a smile she closed her eyes,
Silent she lay there: Does he mean what he says? said the willow-wren; Some of it, said the stare.
"Hark! Wild Robin winds his horn And, as his notes require, Now our laughter-loving spirits
Must in awe retire And let their kinder partners,
Speechless with desire, Go in their holy selfishness,
Unfunny to the fire." Smiling, silently she threw
Her arms about him there : Is it only that? said the willow-wren; It's that as well, said the stare.
Waking in her arms he cried. Utterly content: "I have heard the high good noises, Promoted for an instant, Stood upon the shining outskirts'
Of that Joy I thank For you, my dog and every goody."
There on the grass bank She laughed, he laughed, they laughed together,
Then they ate and drank: Did he know what he meant? said the willow-wren; God only knows, said the stare.
1953
73
Nocturne
Make this night loveable, Moon, and with eye single Looking down from up there, Bless me, One especial And friends everywhere.
With a cloudless brightness Surround our absences; Innocent be our sleeps, Watched by great still spaces, White hills, glittering deeps.
Parted by circumstance, Grant each your indulgence That we may meet in dreams For talk, for dalliance, By warm hearths, by cool streams.
Shine lest tonight any, In the dark suddenly, Wake alone in a bed To hear his own fury Wishing his love were dead.
October 1953
74
Bucolics
I Winds
(FOR ALEXIS LEGER)
Deep below our violences, Quite still, lie our First Dad, his watch
And many little maids, But the boneless winds that blow
Round law-court and temple Recall to Metropolis
That Pliocene Friday when,
At His holy insufflation
(Had He picked a teleost Or an arthropod to inspire,
Would our death also have come?), One bubble-brained creature said—
"I am loved, therefore I am"—: And well by now might the lion
Be lying down with the kid, Had he stuck to that logic.
Winds make weather; weather Is what nasty people are
Nasty about and the nice Show a common joy in observing:
When I seek an image For our Authentic City
(Across what brigs of dread, Down what gloomy galleries,
Must we stagger or crawl Before we may cry—O look!?),
I see old men in hallways Tapping their barometers,
Or a lawn over which, The first thing after breakfast,
A paterfamilias Hurries to inspect his rain-gauge.
Goddess of winds and wisdom, When, on some windless day Of dejection, unable
To name or to structure, Your poet with bodily tics,
Scratching, tapping his teeth, Tugging the lobe of an ear,
Unconsciously invokes You, Show Your good nature, allow Rooster or whistling maid
To fetch him Arthur O'Bower;
Then, if moon-faced Nonsense, That erudite forger, stalk
Through the seven kingdoms, Set Your poplars a-shiver ;
To warn Your clerk lest he Die like an Old Believer
For some spurious reading: And in all winds, no matter
Which of Your twelve he may hear, Equinox gales at midnight
Howling through marram grass, Or a faint susurration
Of pines on a cloudless Afternoon in midsummer, !
Let him feel You present, That every verbal rite