  THE ultimate experiment performed To reach the planes of Mars and Jupiter Without discomfort. First-class passengers With restaurants and Adam sitting rooms, Bathing and barbers, bars American Could while away the slowly-dripping time. Blast-furnaces and gasometers, yards Of bulky timber-joists and refuse-heaps, Pitch, cataclysmic mounds of dross and slag, Deep yawning pits, the seething pores of Hell, Slim towers of factories, vertiginous, Soul-traps to vitiate and brutalize, To mould men bitter and recalcitrant ... The foul miasma of this atmosphere Confabulate in retching multitudes. In tension rapt, awaiting holocausts; Mephitic and fuliginous, the sky— Where green and yellow lights like demon’s eyes Blink through the murk; ideas as microbes flock Half-garrotted; they struggle: “Air, more air!” Spasmodic; then neurotically grasp A semi-groan before the strangulation. The hooters blare through air ... And women sigh near by, For husbands thrash; they lash Gnarled, purple stripes. Oh Cripes! To bear a child is mild Compared to it, a pit Of Hell is sweet, the heat Is soothing, calm as balm. For what is home? a tomb, And men but wive to thrive; In hope they live to give Despair or worse, to curse The squalid life of wife With travail fraught, distraught. The hooters blare through air ... Obese black columns oscillate the streets. The hands troop out into the twilit hour Like billion-herded emmets, dinosaurs That crawl with crude disaster in their souls. There; poised above, a lemon-rind of moon Recalls a youth of twitterings, desires For nacreous, warm flesh. Oh God! that life Should filter so through factory machines. The ancient recrudescence; slowly-healed Wounds all unripped in agony again. Some lips are taut in bloodless nudity: Are they enhungered for the limbs of dead? No; they have savoured lust till they were lax Of mind and body, with no palate for it For smooth, white thighs and hot, fierce mouths they feel Naught else than heavy-lidded lassitude. All of a sudden voices rend the streets; “Comrades, away! The spring is calling, haste Ere we tear moon and stars from out the sky!” The echoes give them courage, and the town Becomes an archipelago of cries. Men hop and run as little children run Pink-naked on a curling yellow beach. The women gaze from doorsteps, gorgon-eyed And wonder what strange madness troubles them. Sir Simon Moss, reclining in a chair, With stout cigar held firm by regular Well-ordered tusks of tooth, can hear the noise. Another war? to reap more profits in Exceeded mortal fortune. Nay; there blazed Some sorry plague. Perhaps the rabies gript ’em. Thus he pursues his reading of The Times. Shrill voices fade, as stars in polychrome Fade on the cold, grey atmosphere of dawn. “Comrades, away! the smack of wind is sweet” Faint as the whisper of dim violins. “Comrades, away ...” faint as the autumn leaves (Burnt paper crackling gently on the breeze). And houses humped like elephants asleep, Insolent hulks out-sprawled on many miles, That muffled women’s sobs; for anxiously They feared the sons would follow in their wake. And the sons followed; far away, the hills Exhaled a ripe, new life where no machines Might pound away the frailly-cobwebbed air. To casual mossy stones and thistle weeds The city crumbled; now its walls lie bare As lidless eyes for crows to peck at them. And in the sloe-gin heat of summer days The sky’s enamel is not quite Limoges But almost; here and there a tiny scratch Of soaring bird, some swallow on the wing Does irritate the surface. Sheer below, Fierce-biting on the edges, rise the trees; Their taper-blossoms opulently lit As girandoles that smoulder silently Blue dust of incense; kohl-eyed evening Sponges the face with dripping fragrances. The vines and olives terraced on the hills Melt on the dean horizon blurringly, Where clouds descend in deluge, liquid-gold. The flies fling flashes on cerulean meres Where steely bream and roach with rosy fins Goggle amongst the shrubberies of cress Half-dizzied by their vacant harmonies. The fruit of the wild gourd or hellebore Has tranced die sense of man; die moonlight leaks In silver puddles on the carpet-lawns. Dry thud of hooves; the satyrs have returned! |
|
