As We Like It

Certainly our city with its byres of poverty down to The river's edge, its cathedral, its engines, its dogs; Here is the cosmopolitan cooking And the light alloys and the glass. Built by the conscience-stricken, the weapon-making, By us. Wild rumours woo and terrify the crowd, Woo us. Betrayers thunder at, blackmail Us. But where now are They. Who without reproaches showed us what our vanity has chosen, Who pursued understanding with patience like a sex, had unlearnt Our hatred and towards the really better World had turned their face? Who knows? The peaked and violent faces are exalted, The feverish prejudiced lives do not care, and lost Their voice in the flutter of bunting, the glittering Brass of our great retreat, And the malice of death. For the wicked card is dealt and The sinister tall-hatted botanist stoops at the spring With his insignificant phial and looses The plague on the ignorant town. Under their shadows the pitiful subalterns are sleeping; The moon is usual; the necessary lovers touch; The river is alone and the trampled flower; And through years of absolute cold The planets rush towards Lyra in a lion's charge. Can Hate so securely bind? Are they dead here? Yes. And the wish to wound has the power. And tomorrow Comes. It's a world. It's a way.