101 Exiles

In among the silver birches,Winding ways of tarmac wanderAnd the signs to Bussock Bottom,Tussock Wood and Windy Break.Gabled lodges, tile-hung churchesCatch the lights of our LagondaAs we drive to Wendy’s party,Lemon curd and Christmas cakeRich the makes of motor whirringPast the pine plantation purringCome up Hupmobile Delage.Short the way our chauffeurs travelCrunching over private gravel,Each from out his warm garage.O but Wendy, when the carpetYielded to my indoor pumps.There you stood, your gold hair streaming,Handsome in the hall light gleamingThere you looked and there you led meOff into the game of Clumps.Then the new Victrola playing;And your funny uncle saying"Choose your partners for a foxtrot.Dance until it's tea o'clockCome on young 'uns, foot it feetly."Was it chance that paired us neatly?I who loved you so completely.You who pressed me closely to you,Hard against your party frock."Meet me when you've finished eating."So we met and no one found us.O that dark and furry cupboard,While the rest played hide-and-seek.Holding hands our two hearts beating.In the bedroom silence round usHolding hands and hardly hearingSudden footstep, thud and shriekLove that lay too deep for kissing."Where is Wendy? Wendy's missing."Love so pure it had to end.Love so strong that I was frightenedWhen you gripped my fingers tight.And hugging, whispered "I'm your friend."Goodbye Wendy. Send the fairies,Pinewood elf and larch tree gnome.Spingle-spangled stars are peepingAt the lush Lagonda creepingDown the winding ways of tarmacTo the leaded lights of home.There among the silver birches,All the bells of all the churchesSounded in the bath-waste runningOut into the frosty air.Wendy speeded my undressing.Wendy is the sheet's caressingWendy bending gives a blessing.Holds me as I drift to dreamlandSafe inside my slumber wear.

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dreadOf dying, and being dead,Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climbClear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever,The sure extinction that we travel toAnd shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere,And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.This is a special way of being afraidNo trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast moth-eaten musical brocadeCreated to pretend we never die,And specious stuff that says No rational beingCan fear a thing it will not feel, not seeingThat this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with,The anaesthetic from which none come round.And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages outIn furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good:It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave.Death is no different whined at than withstood.Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaringIntricate rented world begins to rouse.The sky is white as clay, with no sun.Work has to be done.Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Just because we've torn their statues down,and cast them from their temples,doesn't for a moment mean the gods are dead.Land of Ionia, they love you yet,their spirits still remember you.When an August morning breaks upon youa vigour from their lives stabs through your air;and sometimes an ethereal and youthful formin swiftest passage, indistinct, passes up above your hills.

I thought it would last my time—The sense that, beyond the town,There would always be fields and farms,Where the village louts could climbSuch trees as were not cut down;I knew there’d be false alarms In the papers about old streetsAnd split level shopping, but someHave always been left so far;And when the old part retreatsAs the bleak high-risers comeWe can always escape in the car. Things are tougher than we are, justAs earth will always respondHowever we mess it about;Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:The tides will be clean beyond.—But what do I feel now? Doubt? Or age, simply? The crowdIs young in the M1 cafe;Their kids are screaming for more—More houses, more parking allowed,More caravan sites, more pay.On the Business Page, a score Of spectacled grins approveSome takeover bid that entailsFive per cent profit (and tenPer cent more in the estuaries): moveYour works to the unspoilt dales(Grey area grants)! And when You try to get near the seaIn summer . . . It seems, just now,To be happening so very fast;Despite all the land left freeFor the first time I feel somehowThat it isn’t going to last, That before I snuff it, the wholeBoiling will be bricked inExcept for the tourist parts—First slum of Europe: a roleIt won’t be hard to win,With a cast of crooks and tarts. And that will be England gone,The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,The guildhalls, the carved choirs.There’ll be books; it will linger onIn galleries; but all that remainsFor us will be concrete and tyres. Most things are never meant.This won’t be, most likely; but greedsAnd garbage are too thick-strewnTo be swept up now, or inventExcuses that make them all needs.I just think it will happen, soon.

Let me take this other glove offAs the vox humana swells,And the beauteous fields of EdenBask beneath the Abbey bells.Here, where England's statesmen lie,Listen to a lady's cry.Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,Spare their women for Thy Sake,And if that is not too easyWe will pardon Thy Mistake.But, gracious Lord, whate'er shall be,Don't let anyone bomb me.Keep our Empire undismemberedGuide our Forces by Thy Hand,Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,Honduras and Togoland;Protect them Lord in all their fights,And, even more, protect the whites.Think of what our Nation stands for,Books from Boots' and country lanes,Free speech, free passes, class distinction,Democracy and proper drains.Lord, put beneath Thy special careOne-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.Although dear Lord I am a sinner,I have done no major crime;Now I'll come to Evening ServiceWhensoever I have the time.So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,And do not let my shares go down.I will labour for Thy Kingdom,Help our lads to win the war,Send white feathers to the cowardsJoin the Women's Army Corps,Then wash the steps around Thy ThroneIn the Eternal Safety Zone.Now I feel a little better,What a treat to hear Thy Word,Where the bones of leading statesmenHave so often been interr'd.And now, dear Lord, I cannot waitBecause I have a luncheon date.I will labour for Thy Kingdom,Help our lads to win the war,Send white feathers to the cowardsJoin the Women's Army Corps,Then wash the steps around Thy ThroneIn the Eternal Safety Zone.Now I feel a little better,What a treat to hear Thy Word,Where the bones of leading statesmenHave so often been interr'd.And now, dear Lord, I cannot waitBecause I have a luncheon date.

The trees are coming into leafLike something almost being said;The recent buds relax and spread,Their greenness is a kind of grief.Is it that they are born againAnd we grow old? No, they die too,Their yearly trick of looking newIs written down in rings of grain.Yet still the unresting castles threshIn fullgrown thickness every May.Last year is dead, they seem to say,Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Encase your legs in nylons,Bestride your hills with pylonsO age without a soul;Away with gentle willowsAnd all the elmy billowsThat through your valleys roll.Let's say goodbye to hedgesAnd roads with grassy edgesAnd winding country lanes;Let all things travel fasterWhere motor car is masterTill only Speed remains.Destroy the ancient inn-signsBut strew the roads with tin signs'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'Command, instruction, warning,Repetitive adorningThe rockeried roundabout;For every raw obscenityMust have its small 'amenity,'Its patch of shaven green,And hoardings look a wonderIn banks of floribundaWith floodlights in between.Leave no old village standingWhich could provide a landingFor aeroplanes to roar,But spare such cheap defacementsAs huts with shattered casementsUnlived-in since the war.Let no provincial High StreetWhich might be your or my streetLook as it used to do,But let the chain stores place hereTheir miles of black glass faciaAnd traffic thunder through.And if there is some scenery,Some unpretentious greenery,Surviving anywhere,It does not need protectingFor soon we'll be erectingA Power Station there.When all our roads are lightedBy concrete monsters sitedLike gallows overhead,Bathed in the yellow vomitEach monster belches from it,We'll know that we are dead.

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today.Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.Why did our emperor get up so early,and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names.Why have our two consuls and praetors come out todaywearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?Why are they carrying elegant canesbeautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usualto make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?(How serious people’s faces have become.)Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,everyone going home lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come. And some of our men just in from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?Those people were a kind of solution.

Tightly-folded bud,I have wished you somethingNone of the others would:Not the usual stuffAbout being beautiful,Or running off a springOf innocence and love —They will all wish you that,And should it prove possible,Well, you’re a lucky girl.But if it shouldn’t, thenMay you be ordinary;Have, like other women,An average of talents:Not ugly, not good-looking,Nothing uncustomaryTo pull you off your balance,That, unworkable itself,Stops all the rest from working.In fact, may you be dull —If that is what a skilled,Vigilant, flexible,Unemphasised, enthralledCatching of happiness is called.

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we dieAll's over that is ours; and life burns onThrough other lovers, other lips," said I,-- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!""We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;"We shall go down with unreluctant treadRose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

John Vavasour de Quentin Joneswas very fond of throwing stoneslike many of the upper classhe loved the sound of breaking glass( a line I stole with subtle daringfrom Wing Commander Maurice Baring)

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,Lying together there goes back so far,An emblem of two people being honest.Yet more and more time passes silently.Outside, the wind's incomplete unrestBuilds and disperses clouds in the sky,And dark towns heap up on the horizon.None of this cares for us. Nothing shows whyAt this unique distance from isolationIt becomes still more difficult to findWords at once true and kind,Or not untrue and not unkind.

Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,Up the ivy climbs the sun,With a twenty-thousand pattering,Has a valley breeze begun,Feathery ash, neglected elder,Shift the shade and make it run -Shift the shade toward the nettles,And the nettles set it free,To streak the stained Carrara headstone,Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,He who trained a hundred winners,Paid the Final Entrance Fee.Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,Leathery skin from sun and wind,Leathery breeches, spreading stables,Shining saddles left behind -To the down the string of horsesMoving out of sight and mind.Feathery ash in leathery LambourneWaves above the sarsen stone,And Edwardian plantationsSo coniferously moanAs to make the swelling downland,Far surrounding, seem their own.

Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie in stone, Their proper habits vaguely shown As jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd— The little dogs under their feet.Such plainness of the pre-baroque Hardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlet, still Clasped empty in the other; and One sees, with a sharp tender shock, His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.They would not think to lie so long. Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see:A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace Thrown off in helping to prolong The Latin names around the base.They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage, Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beginTo look, not read. Rigidly theyPersisted, linked, through lengths and breadths Of time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the glass. A bright Litter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-riddled ground. And up the paths The endless altered people came,Washing at their identity. Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains:Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

When suddenly, at midnight, you hearan invisible procession going bywith exquisite music, voices,don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,work gone wrong, your plansall proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.As one long prepared, and graced with courage,say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t sayit was a dream, your ears deceived you:don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.As one long prepared, and graced with courage,as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,go firmly to the windowand listen with deep emotion, but notwith the whining, the pleas of a coward;listen—your final delectation—to the voices,to the exquisite music of that strange procession,and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

I saw three ships go sailing by,Over the sea, the lifting sea,And the wind rose in the morning sky,And one was rigged for a long journey.The first ship turned towards the west,Over the sea, the running sea,And by the wind was all possessedAnd carried to a rich country.The second ship turned towards the east,Over the sea, the quaking sea,And the wind hunted it like a beastTo anchor in captivity.The third ship drove towards the north,Over the sea, the darkening sea,But no breath of wind came forth,And the decks shone frostily.The northern sky rose high and blackOver the proud unfruitful sea,East and west the ships came backHappily or unhappily:But the third went wide and farInto an unforgiving seaUnder a fire-spilling star,And it was rigged for a long journey.

My head is bald, my breath is bad, Unshaven is my chin,I have not now the joys I had When I was young in sin.I run my fingers down your dress With brandy-certain aimAnd you respond to my caress And maybe feel the same.But I've a picture of my own On this reunion night,Wherein two skeletons are shewn To hold each other tight;Dark sockets look on emptiness Which once was loving-eyed,The mouth that opens for a kiss Has got no tongue inside.I cling to you inflamed with fear As now you cling to me,I feel how frail you are my dear And wonder what will be —A week? or twenty years remain? And then — what kind of death?A losing fight with frightful pain Or a gasping fight for breath?Too long we let our bodies cling, We cannot hide disgustAt all the thoughts that in us spring From this late-flowering lust.

I never found them again—all lost so quickly...the poetic eyes, the pale face...in the darkening street... I never found them again—mine entirely by chance,and so easily given up,then longed for so painfully.The poetic eyes, the pale face,those lips—I never found them again.

There was a Boy whose name was Jim;His Friends were very good to him.They gave him Tea, and Cakes, and Jam,And slices of delicious Ham,And Chocolate with pink insideAnd little Tricycles to ride,And read him Stories through and through,And even took him to the Zoo--But there it was the dreadful FateBefell him, which I now relate.You know--or at least you ought to know,For I have often told you so--That Children never are allowedTo leave their Nurses in a Crowd;Now this was Jim's especial Foible,He ran away when he was able,And on this inauspicious dayHe slipped his hand and ran away!He hadn't gone a yard when--Bang!With open Jaws, a lion sprang,And hungrily began to eatThe Boy: beginning at his feet.Now, just imagine how it feelsWhen first your toes and then your heels,And then by gradual degrees,Your shins and ankles, calves and knees,Are slowly eaten, bit by bit.No wonder Jim detested it!No wonder that he shouted ``Hi!''The Honest Keeper heard his cry,Though very fat he almost ranTo help the little gentleman.``Ponto!'' he ordered as he came(For Ponto was the Lion's name),``Ponto!'' he cried, with angry Frown,``Let go, Sir! Down, Sir! Put it down!''The Lion made a sudden stop,He let the Dainty Morsel drop,And slunk reluctant to his Cage,Snarling with Disappointed Rage.But when he bent him over Jim,The Honest Keeper's Eyes were dim.The Lion having reached his Head,The Miserable Boy was dead!When Nurse informed his Parents, theyWere more Concerned than I can say:--His Mother, as She dried her eyes,Said, ``Well--it gives me no surprise,He would not do as he was told!''His Father, who was self-controlled,Bade all the children round attendTo James's miserable end,And always keep a-hold of NurseFor fear of finding something worse.

To step over the low wall that dividesRoad from concrete walk above the shoreBrings sharply back something known long before –The miniature gaiety of seasides.Everything crowds under the low horizon:Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps,The small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapseUp the warm yellow sand, and further offA white steamer stuck in the afternoon –Still going on, all of it, still going on!To lie, eat, sleep in hearing of the surf(Ears to transistors, that sound tame enoughUnder the sky), or gently up and downLead the uncertain children, frilled in whiteAnd grasping at enormous air, or wheelThe rigid old along for them to feelA final summer, plainly still occursAs half an annual pleasure, half a rite,As when, happy at being on my own,I searched the sand for Famous Cricketers,Or, farther back, my parents, listenersTo the same seaside quack, first became known.Strange to it now, I watch the cloudless scene:The same clear water over smoothed pebblesThe distant bathers’ weak protesting treblesDown at its edge, and then the cheap cigars,The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, betweenThe rocks, the rusting soup-tins, till the firstFew families start the trek back to the cars.The white steamer has gone. Like breathed-on glassThe sunlight has turned milky. If the worstOf flawless weather is our falling short,It may be that through habit these do best,Coming to water clumsily undressedYearly; teaching their children by a sortOf clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.