Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
C
<div class="poem">
<p>And yet these fine collapses are not lies<br />
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;<br />
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.<br />
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:<br />
What blame to us if the heart live on.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
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<div class="poem">
<p>The game enforces smirks; but we have seen<br />
The moon in lonely alleys make<br />
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,<br />
And through all sound of gaiety and quest<br />
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>For we can still love the world, who find<br />
A famished kitten on the step, and know<br />
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,<br />
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>We make our meek adjustments,<br />
Contented with such random consolations<br />
As the wind deposits<br />
In slithered and too ample pockets.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Can we think a few old cells<br />
were left—we are left—<br />
grains of honey,<br />
old dust of stray pollen<br />
dull on our torn wings,<br />
we are left to recall the old streets ?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Can we believe—by an effort<br />
comfort our hearts:<br />
it is not waste all this,<br />
not placed here in disgust,<br />
street after street,<br />
each patterned alike,<br />
no grace to lighten<br />
a single house of the hundred<br />
crowded into one garden-space.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>You are useless. We live.<br />
We await great events.<br />
We are spread through this earth.<br />
We protect our strong race.<br />
You are useless.<br />
Your cell takes the place<br />
of our young future strength.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>And in these dark cells,<br />
packed street after street,<br />
souls live, hideous yet—<br />
O disfigured, defaced,<br />
with no trace of the beauty<br />
men once held so light.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>For alas,<br />
he had crowded the city so full<br />
that men could not grasp beauty,<br />
beauty was over them,<br />
through them, about them,<br />
no crevice unpacked with the honey,<br />
rare, measureless.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>That the maker of cities grew faint<br />
with the splendour of palaces,<br />
paused while the incense-flowers<br />
from the incense-trees<br />
dropped on the marble-walk,<br />
thought anew, fashioned this—<br />
street after street alike.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>So he built a new city,<br />
ah can we believe, not ironically<br />
but for new splendour<br />
constructed new people<br />
to lift through slow growth<br />
to a beauty unrivalled yet—<br />
and created new cells,<br />
hideous first, hideous now—<br />
spread larve across them,<br />
not honey but seething life.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Is our task the less sweet<br />
that the larve still sleep in their cells?<br />
Or crawl out to attack our frail strength:
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Though we wander about,<br />
find no honey of flowers in this waste,<br />
is our task the less sweet—<br />
who recall the old splendour,<br />
await the new beauty of cities?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Though they sleep or wake to torment<br />
and wish to displace our old cells—<br />
thin rare gold—<br />
that their larve grow fat—<br />
is our task the less sweet?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Crowded—can we believe,<br />
not in utter disgust,<br />
in ironical play—<br />
but the maker of cities grew faint<br />
with the beauty of temple<br />
and space before temple,<br />
arch upon perfect arch,<br />
of pillars and corridors that led out<br />
to strange court-yards and porches<br />
where sun-light stamped<br />
hyacinth-shadows<br />
black on the pavement.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Is this what we want?<br />
Have so many generations lived and died for this?<br />
There have been Crusades, persecutions, wars, and majestic arts,<br />
There have been murders and passions and horrors since man was in the jungle...<br />
What was this blood-toll for?<br />
Just so that everybody could have a full belly and be well-mannered?
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>But let us not fool ourselves:<br />
This civilization is mostly varnish very thinly laid on...<br />
Take any newspaper any morning: scan through it...<br />
Rape, murder, villany, and picking and stealing:<br />
The mob that tore a negro to pieces, the men that ravished a young girl:<br />
The safe-blowing gang and the fat cowardly promoter who stole people’s savings...<br />
Just scan it through: this news of civilization...
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Let us not be afraid of ourselves, but face ourselves and confess what we are:<br />
Let us go backward a while that we may go forward:<br />
This is an excellent age for insurrection, revolt, and the reddest of revolutions...
</p>
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