#English #XXCentury
Down stucco sidestreets, Where light is pewter And afternoon mist Brings lights on in shops Above race—guides and rosaries,
Obedient daily dress, You cannot always keep That unfakable young surface. You must learn your lines — Anger, amusement, sleep;
When I was a child, I thought, Casually, that solitude Never needed to be sought. Something everybody had, Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
The little lives of earth and form… Of finding food, and keeping warm, Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness
The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter i… Till wind distresses tail and main… Then one crops grass, and moves ab… —The other seeming to look on—
What do they think has happened, t… To make them like this? Do they s… It’s more grown-up when your mouth… And you keep on pissing yourself,… Who called this morning? Or that,…
Rain patters on a sea that tilts a… Fast-running floors, collapsing in… Tower suddenly, spray-haired. Con… A wave drops like a wall: another… Wilting and scrambling, tirelessly…
Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils
There is an evening coming in Across the fields, one never seen… That lights no lamps. Silken it seems at a distance, yet When it is drawn up over the knees…
On shallow straw, in shadeless gla… Huddled by empty bowls, they sleep… No dark, no dam, no earth, no gras… Mam, get us one of them to keep. Living toys are something novel,
In this dream that dogs me I am p… Of a silent crowd walking under a… Leaving a football match, perhaps,… All moving the same way. After a… A second wall closes on our right,
Closed like confessionals, they th… Loud noons of cities, giving back None of the glances they absorb. Light glossy grey, arms on a plaqu… They come to rest at any kerb:
Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun
‘This was Mr Bleaney’s room. He… The whole time he was at the Bodi… They moved him.’ Flowered curtain… Fall to within five inches of the… Whose window shows a strip of buil…
Words as plain as hen—birds’ wings Do not lie, Do not over—broider things — Are too shy. Thoughts that shuffle round like p…