Collected Poems

When on a familiar but deserted beach

You meet a gentleman you recognize

As your own death, know who he is and teach

Yourself he comes with flower-blue eyes

To wipe the salt-spray from all new intentions,

And kiss you on each sunken cheek to ease

Into your blood the strength to leave this life:

(A minor transmutation of disease)

To watch the mechanism of each arm

Inside your arms of flesh and fingernail,

To despise the ancient wild alarm

Behind each eye. Shaking your hand so frail

Your own death breathes possessive fire

(A familiar voice that no one understands)

Striding quickly, sporting elegant attire,

Coming towards you on these once deserted sands.

Death has no power in these clear skies

Where olives in December shed their milk:

Too temperate to strike

At orange-terraces and archaic moon:

But Death is strong where hemlock stones

Stand at the foot of cold Druidic hills;

There I was born when snow lay

Under naked willows, and frost

Boomed along grey ponds at afternoon,

Frightening birds that

Though hardened for long winters,

Fled from the nerve-filled ground,

Beat their soundless wings away

From Death’s first inflicted wound.

The water that touches your thighs

Swallowed the STRUMA.

Water that folded the wings of Icarus

Climbs your limbs, sharp with salt

That stiffened the beard of Odysseus.

Tragedy, comedy, legend and history —

Invisible wakes through centuries

Of exiles seeking home:

You turn and look as if at

The wandering Ark of the Hebrews,

Then cleave the waters of your Inland Sea.

You had a dream last night:

Deep in my primeval sleep

A match was made between my heart and yours

And I moved into love with you

And found your body willing.

Maybe it began with you

When deep in your primeval sleep

A wielding of desire for some

Fulfilling (too matter of fact

And clumsy in afternoon or evening)

Drew me out of some too private dream

And held us plough to furrow.

No judgement made, for neither side

Can settle on the cause,

And no more thought is here but this:

What if a birth should come

Out of our midnight dreams?

If I throw out my arms and strike

The night that comes, open my heart

To whoever guards survivors, favours struggles

Carries sunshine garlanded about

Her waist, will my fight fail?

Will I unbuckle my resistance

In the darkness? Let ice melt

Fear kill, suffer death to take me?

Though passion is not greatness

Nor greatness passion

When measured by such fluid odds

As sunlight and death,

Passion augments

The alchemy of returning life

Stands the blood high in its demand,

Becomes supremely knowing,

And draws me back

Into the living battle of our love.

Out of my thousand voices

I speak with one

To the waves and flying saltfoam,

Flinging the dovetailed words

Of a single voice

At the knife-edged prow

Of the ship unbreakable

That carries her away.

I throw the one remaining voice

Of all my thousand out to sea

And watch it curving

Into the black-paunched water

Like a falling star,

A single word of love

That drops into the grave,

A thousand echoes falling by her ship.

One great problem poses:

What is that island we’re passing?

Green hills, white houses,

Grey peak, a blue sky,

Ship sailing smooth.

These problems arise

On islands that pass,

White houses lived in

And mountains climbed,

Clouds moving like ships

And ships like clouds.

We on deck open baskets for lunch

To feed the problem of each white island

Of how steep such contours

And shallow those bays,

And who keens that song

In pinewoods by the shore.

‘How beautiful it is’ —

And how remote, waiting for other islands

We shall pass, puzzled that the birds

Can dip their wings at many.

What is that island we’re passing

Heartshaped and hemlocked

Watered by a winding stream?

A monument to us and we a monument to it —

A great problem posed

Till each unanswering island

Left in darkness grows a separate light:

Solutions beyond reach:

Cobalt funereal in the deep sea.

The ocean was timeless, blue

When your unwaxed wings wheeled towards heaven.

Wind was recalled, emptiness new

And smooth as Thermopylae’s lagoon given

To the Heroes’ barge held in repose. Nothing stirred:

The gods watched and held their breath

Forgot to stake each others’ wives, heard

Wings feather the air, dip and climb. Death

Did not come to Daedalus. The sun

Heliographed his escaper, watched his prison cloak

Colouring the sea, shadowing his one

Track channelled to Italy, whose mirror spoke

For his safety. Icarus found entirety

In a gleam from the sun. Was it a lotus-land

He climbed to? A mission of piety

Foretelling a lesser doom written upon sand

For older men? Or pure myth? His wings aileroned

The windless air and carried him in a curve

Measured by a rainbow’s greatness above the honed

Earth: lifted him through a mauve

Loophole of sky. No ships sleeved

The water and filled a farewell in their sails

Or circled the fallen wings, or grieved,

And Daedalus, onward flying, knew no warning fairytales.

Scorpions lurk under loose stones

Marked on Leipzig maps, and electric tramways

Ride shallow loops over thrown-up bones;

Eternal dust guides shadowed gangways

To Punic necropolia tombed-out

In timeless tangents, watched by upstart towers

Of a young cathedral, basilicas combed-out

By Time’s long competition and the hours

Of each’s ruin. The shadows of Jesus

And Hamilcar and the later dead

Back up the ancient argument that whims are diced

Out by the timelessness of heaven. The bled

Lips of this crumbling village, with the cry

Of begging children, prove that stone and scorpion lie.

Autumn again: how many more?

The quiet land broods

In the peace of hope taken away,

Like a birth in silence

Or slipping unnoticed towards Death.

In the dusk and softness of earth’s evening

Black figs fall and burst:

Pig food, earth food

Tears from the tree’s broad face.

The familiar wind makes passions tolerable:

A woman does not know for whom she sings;

A prophecy of rain when clouds collect

And the earth in its achievement turns

But will not breathe.

Out of the snow my brother came

Ghost within ghost like a child’s game

Of case into case;

Cloud reflections smashed with wattled feet,

A coniferous stick wielded to meet

Face with face.

Moss-warmed, waist-coated with leaves

His memory survived to shake my hand,

Soil-laden fingers

Reaching from my brother who craves

Impossibly for the enormous land

Where no man lingers.

A surrogate ghost my brother found a road

Across blue ridges, by marks of axe and woad

From Okhotsk shores:

Until frost-bitten both in one grey form

Ghost became brother to an Arctic storm

Beyond all laws.

A price was paid to wilderness and fire:

Flashbacks of his vision beamed

On bleak Siberian snows

Show recollection full of truth and liar:

What one remembers never is what seemed

But what some stranger throws

Up like a ghost before your eyes,

A picture that the ghost of you would see

Had it the power to span

The world from now to then and recognize

What memory discarded and set free

Before you turned and ran.

Each morning my brother asks himself what words

Remain to ply and weave, what dreams, what birds

By twilight to make

Warm nests behind the sockets of his eyes

Opened by gentian-blue barbarian skies

That stayed in his wake.

A youth spent uprooting deciduous nerves

Gave strength to the broad-winding river-curves

Of his soul;

Tenacious eyes sought leaf-mould for breath

Each footstep released what life lived in death

In that great coal-

Forest that froze and murdered yet gave him air

To create a miracle by silent prayer

In my too-undying heart;

My brother became me, memories welded with steel

United in fever and flame, but never to heal,

Only meeting to part.

Dog-fought to its death by folded paper:

An overloaded bluebottle

Crossed the window on a clumsy track

Like a Junkers 52 aimed for Crete.

Survivor of the rains,

With the temerity to try it on

Too long with autumn,

It never knew what happened –

Landed on a matchbox, dead but hardly damaged:

Convenient for what it carried.

One by one its passengers came out:

White-hooded monks debouching

From a still war-painted aircraft

At its dispersal point;

Wriggling over fuselage and wings

As if inspecting flaws after a crash-landing

Of skin and wing that covered

A maggot-cargo from the summer weather,

As if they had paid ticket, food and board

And wanted refund for a trip cut short,

Turned and drew back in lily-whiteness,

Upright with peevish nagging

At some travel agent robber.

Horror was what I felt at filth on filth

Too quickly feeding

To feed the many filthy mouths within,

Horror at the proof of life so powerful

Unsuicidable

Persistent in such ways too small to realize.

For those in need of comfort

That the human race will beat survival

To the end of time

This is it, I thought –

These little bleeders twisting out their time

Are Godsent guarantees

That you and I have season-tickets

For too long to contemplate:

For in the middle of the final maggot

One maggot will survive

To start it all again.

Certain dark underground eyes

Have been set upon

The vast emporiums of London.

Lids blink red

At glittering shops

Houses and museums

Shining at night

Chandeliers of historic establishments

Showing interiors to Tartar eyes.

Certain dark underground eyes

Bearing blood-red sack

The wineskins of centuries

Look hungrily at London:

How many women in London?

A thousand thousand houses

Filled with the world’s high living

And fabulous knick-knacks;

Each small glossy machine

By bedside or on table or in bathroom

Is the electrical soul of its owner

The finished heart responding

To needle or gentle current;

And still more houses, endlessly stacked

Asleep with people waiting

To be exploded

The world’s maidenhead supine for breaking

By corpuscle Tartars

To whom a toothbrush

Is a miracle;

What vast looting

What jewels of fires

What great cries

And long convoys

Of robbed and robbers

Leaving the sack

Of rich great London.

A horse in a field drinking water:

A child’s drawing (with a tree)

Is how it looks to me

From a bed and through the window.

Village houses stacked behind

But horse made beautiful

Blown into shape

Back bent to water.

My view uncomplicated:

Your eager nostrils drinking

And unseen except by me

Who sees me watching you drinking

Even the slime and water

At the bottom of your pool.

Who — as well as making you –

Put you face to face

(Within the child’s drawing of a field

Looking clear into the pool

That children envy)

And me here?

No complaint,

For you have field and tree and water

And I my child’s drawing through the window.

Fire and water

Chemically meet

In mutual slaughter.

Fire would the other cook:

The evangelical conviction

Of a Six-day Book.

Water would the other kill:

Philanthropy to bring

High temperatures to nil.

Yet ask what solid flesh may stay

Fire with swamp

Water with baked clay;

Neither compound an utter loss:

One left with dregs

And one with dross.

How did they begin? What oracular sound

Reached us from platforms underground?

What muzzle moved against the humid clay?

What well-clawed feet scratched into ocular day?

They waited, sleek-bellied rats

Whose memories (kept dry in old tin hats)

Were parchment-read and spread, then lit

As torches to illuminate for these rats

The runnels and the tunnels of each pit.

Revenge was not the fashion: those who shoved

Were put no fatal question, a balanced glove

Ignored upon their shoulders, while in the mines

Unchallenged diggers sent out signs

Of geologic stairways built on bones:

A noise of rodents nosing through the stones.

Where are they now? With perfect guile

They breathe good air and walk such streets above

That glisten with fraternity and love;

In plastic surgery of grim disguise

They sport dark spectacles instead of eyes

Who might be you or me or that false smile

That gives out bread-and-butter in God’s name

And silently observes responses — like a game.

Where? No need to look around, my friend

Or in big books that open at the end

(Since legibility is no great tool).

Nowhere. Stand on your head and play the fool.

How? Put out your tongue and shut one eye:

Good. Stay like that until you die.

And then? The rats will still be underground

Snug in their galleries, unsought, unfound

Untried and tied to undermining tricks

Until your houses shiver and collapse like sticks:

They speak corruption, live among its flowers

Proliferate black seeds in April showers.

The heart stops breeding fields of verity

Becomes an eggtimer overworked and spun

By propaganda whose ignoble run

Of words begets not progress but obesity.

One day you’ll take your best friend’s hand

And feel his fingers turning into sand.

No one will lift the black patch from a warning

Who cannot see the night from too much morning.

So? You ask too many questions, son:

Take off those glasses, and pick up that gun.

Those continentals, the funny English say,

Until my brain rebels and with grey

Just logic substitutes for ‘English’ a word

Many might object to, a label too absurd

To comprehend, a double syllable

That to me will remain unkillable

Like gutter children or an Arab nomad:

Namely I rename an Angle ‘OGAD’.

This brain-somersault has made

It suddenly impossible to call

An oak a limetree or a spade a spade

After sixty months meandering

In warm Majorca and coniferous glade

Where many tongues in silent valleys mix

To push my English to the further banks of Styx.

The first grey sago-OGAD met by me

Was on the high grey waves of OGAD sea,

Stamping passports on the ferryboat

Before the mouth of Dover’s dismal throat.

Unprivileged aliens in their special queue

Etched their names for white-faced men in blue,

Unbribable stern servants of the realm

Whose rat-like ashen fingers grip the helm

Of OGADLAND, keep an inner circle speed

To guard an obsolescent greed

Of law and order firm behind seven veils

Of self-important mists — and Channel gales.

I lingered in this continental line

Idealizing Britain-of-the Brine

To my American wife with passport green,

Until a tall Sicilian wept and cried

That those grey OGAD cliffs so vaguely seen

Would ever bar his way to Paradise –

Because a leaden-weighted face of ice,

Bilious from its last attack of spleen,

Based his entry on a throw of dice.

Weeping so, he’d do no wrong

I say, but who am I when rubber stamps

And lines of ANGLE-OGAD faces vet

With blank dictatorship these so-called tramps?

Such rats will face the floodtide yet.

Many pink-faced OGADS of the north

I have met on Sundays leading forth

Pink-faced OGAD-dogs on lengths of leather

On typical wet days of OGAD weather.

The second month came musically sweet

And mild, blue skies glittering with birdsong

And silver jetplanes frolicking like fleet

Lambs not yet responsible. ‘What a

Beautiful raincloud over there!’

Black and grey, yet

Surely a silver-lining lurks somewhere?

How strangely like a mountain, round and jet;

Moving with speed, yet silently, no rain

Falling from its cabbage — no, cauliflower — head:

And suddenly a mushroom grows instead!

Such OGAD weather does not give clear vision

Hides all above the level of the eyes

Makes only power to see with fair precision

Certain orders posted by the wise

Of this dark OGAD world: ‘Keep off the grass’

And ‘Queue this side of sign’. ‘Thou shalt not pass

Unless your child or dog be on a lead’.

‘Keep to the left’. ‘Slow down’. ‘Reduce your speed’.

‘Don’t park your car upon this hallowed spot’.

‘Drop litter here’. (That animals begot?)

‘Step along there, room for two inside’.

And not one democrat looked up and sighed:

You need not lift your face towards the sky,

All orders are placed level with the eye.

These pithy messages must make good trade

For those who paint them. A poet’s blade

Can’t cut more ice, the brains

Of dull bespectacled sad OGAD folk

Are taught by television and a race for trains

Each morning not to test the laden yoke

By a gaze to heaven, when all earthy bread

Is planted firmly at their feet instead.

Revolution is the word of God

A firefly that lifts from soddened ground

For one second at the end of spring.

So go the workings of the unsound

Mind in its beginnings, a minor sting

That no rat notices, and turns no brown

Last winter’s leaf to face the sky.

In this live jungle must the mind leap down

To feed on pickings of dark soil, and shy

Its hawk-beak at the earth’s sweet guile:

Then rise full-caloried to kill in style.

These are the commandments of the rats:

You shall be born into the melting-vats

Without an eye to give or a tooth to lose

And never want for schooling, work or shoes.

Good: but each advertisement is a decree

A hanged man on the propaganda tree

(From ITV as well as BBC)

To make it shoot up high and thin:

A hundred thousand may begin

To march one damp October dawn:

You can’t thank Life that you were born,

Says Rat beneath his atom-cloud: the melting-vats

Demand obedience to no one but the rats.

You shall love the rats who take the hours

From your clumsy hands, who guide you over roads

And traffic islands, take heavy loads

From lighter brains, give paper flowers

Of happiness, and stand you in a line

For bus or train, transport you to a house

And television set and OGAD wine:

You too can be a rat divine

A living civil servant of a louse

Though first you must become a mouse.

O hear me, soulless OGADS of the mist

Older than the rocks on which you pissed

The winter snows away for idle summer;

Listen to the rawboned pitprop drummer

Who versifies rebellion from the ice

(In exile where he feeds on uncooked rice

That one day will explode his walnut fist)

Hear his warning over your contented mummer

And the mewings of devoted mice:

Catastrophe will be the last device.

So keep your whiskers weaving while you may

Beneath blue helmets, antennae of the law

Sensitively finding those who pray

For criminal success by some shop door.

The time to strike is now. Drop your club

Upon the head that holds ideas to boast

Your kill, who stands like an untamed cub

For buses on the wrong side of the post.

Keep your long rat-whiskers sleek

The man with garden shears may die next week

Next month, yet maybe come with fist and claw

With fuses primed in a Beethoven score

And dynamite ensconced in crated butter.

You do not even hear them mutter.

They watch you pace (from behind a shutter)

See you preen your whiskers as you walk

Twirl your truncheon, chew your rind of pork

Watch a drunk negotiate the street

(Correctly). You glance at the callbox of your power

Blind to their refusal of defeat

As they debate on when to name the hour.

King Rodent reigns on OGAD demock-rats

On water rats that watch each riverbank

And bridge for criminals who do not thank

King Rodent’s riddance of white leopard cats:

They wait until the shadow’s leap

Becomes an offer of a well-aired bed

That does not promise them a life of sleep.

King Happiness has waved his magic wand

Shown you a smooth reflection in the pond

Of television shows, recorded your own voice

In the self-selections of your choice,

Set up his directions on the street

Turned mechanic to your motorbikes

Poured patriot sauce upon your luncheon meat

Sent you out on Sunday-morning hikes:

Party-hatted happiness is here,

Each tenet brayed by a Royal Chanticleer.

Death is not preferable (had you

Considered it?) to this untrue-

To-life and that man’s sweated brow.

How could, an end called Death

End this as easily as that

Man thinks? Questions come

From artesian springs

Labyrinths of sea and soil

Making question marks

Out of eternal water

Demanding bloody answers

And a bloody year

Of cleansing. Slaughter?

Here comes the First Battalion

Television Light Infantry

With bayonets fixed –

Break them down!

Around the left flank come

The Porno Paper Cavalry Corps

Riding pink and yellow tanks –

Cut them off!

Under your feet spring

The Rat-State Sapper Brigade:

Dig them over like a garden

Do not let their forces overwhelm you

Rather go insane before they

Force you to their ranks

Or kill you.

The pyrotechnic paranoia of the anti-rats:

Clean against dark

Light opposing Death

Tearing slide-rule and scalpel, pen and typewriter,

Scales of rat-justice, rat-precision,

Libraries recording rat-right and rat-wrong

Rats that nip away each toe

And suck the soles of too thin feet

Rats that eat your eyes like oysters

Spread false trails over burrowed hills

Swamp-rats wood-rats tree rats

Plague-rats, pet-rats, army and police-rats

Sadistic rats that will not kill

Kind rats that drug you in the night

Rats that let you crush them in the garden

Run across your path

Climb trees before you see them

Eat corn that would give you the strength to kill them

Rats that laugh, rats that fill the night with infants crying

Rats that gloat, rats that bend your life before them

Rats that move around you in the night

Rats invisible that ring you during day

Rats in books, on radios, in tins of food

On television screens, rats behind

A million miles of counters

Wielding guide-books, tables, catalogues

Slide-rules, stethoscopes, maps

Election registers, passports, insurance stamps

Death certificates, prison records

Visas, references, forms to sign

Case histories, birth certificates

Statistics, interview reports

Personality tests, loyalty rating

And knives to cure

The pyrotechnic paranoia of the anti-rats.

The city is seething with discontent

For they all wonder where the deserters went:

They took no beer and they took no bread

And everyone says that they must be dead:

Some speak with anger (a few speak with tears)

But most out of vague speculatory fears

That they still live among us, active and thin

Or are out in the wilderness about to dig in

And return to besiege us when winter has fled.

The deserters are waiting without beer or bread

Around ancient fires of obstinate coke,

And they laugh in the city and wonder who spoke

When the wind lifts a flame from wilderness fires

(Caught in snowlight — quickly expires)

They look up and listen from parlour debates

Then resume their relinquished sensory states

Within and without their crumbling walls,

Like jungle tigers secure in their night

When the forlorn bark of the jackal calls.

Behind the rat-horizons of the world

Try to decipher what history has hurled

Against the white range of your exposed spine;

Sit in your isolated jungle and define

(Among pine-needles and a flask of wine)

Your lack of Revolutionary fire

Love of safety (number one desire)

Happily tied to the waterwheel

For irrigation that will soon congeal

Blood in brain and arms, will sit you still

And quiet while the busy rats distil

Sweet liquor as a chaser for each pill

That saps away the flame of heart and will.

You found it hard to struggle for house and bread

To hone a sword and guide a plough

Found the ache too much for your tread

From one loaf to another, held your head

Low because you killed the man who stood

Before you for a faggot of dry wood.

Sailing from one coast to another grew

Wearying. You wanted women and a mild brew

To dull what wits the day’s work left sound,

To sleep your life out on dry ground

Find a warm hut and a midnight glow,

A woman clothed in black from head to toe.

Sling, spear, plough, lathe and pen

Made artificers of house and den

Weighed power on scales and gave books of law

To save you from the blight of fang and claw,

Until this comfort to Utopia goes

Beyond a golden mean and throws

Us into progress where perfection flags:

Scarecrows beneath banners of atomic rags.

Like Zeno’s arrow the motion is but sure:

From good to bad or bad to good:

No ship stood in stillness pure

Moved north or south in flood-

Tide and wild wind, or smartly drove

Its mainsail back to struggle and song

After a doldrum residence wherein wove

Sea-dolphins — opium to the eyes in long

Performance. Either move,

Or the sea swells into another form,

Little choice between calm and storm.

Each man wants to move the boat

Clockwise with fashionable hands

Reading history on how to float

Upon the wash with watermusic bands.

One calls the tune but others play the music

And idle waves of Neptune make the crew sick.

The rats devise solutions for each lake

Each overture and song reduce to easy,

Fix stabilizers firm from wind to wake:

And still the crew persist in feeling queasy.

Old antagonisms rage:

Rat-machinations roped with force

Imprison beauty in a cage,

Encircle it with propaganda morse.

‘Corruption is corruption, sometimes sweet

Is only dangerous when it stagnates:

Corrupt before, corrupted ever

Only keep it moving to be safe.’

First Rat: Feed, house, educate and teach

Place anti-seasick tablets in their reach.

Second Rat: Dope, rope, spiflicate and preach

Colour them by sunray lamps or bleach.

Third Rat: Dazzle, flash, warp their speech

Send them every Sunday to the beach.

Fourth Rat: Deceive, demand, even beseech

Cleverly, cleverly — they’ll never screech!

Retreat like Scythians, like men of hair

Back into folding earth and lair:

Burn and scorch black the rich fields that you leave,

Once tilled with freedom and passion-verse.

Prepare to destroy that for which you grieve:

It is already ruined by the worse

Rat venom. Do not wish for what was there

Before Rats came but keep the cleansed air

Uncloyed, devoid of devil-noses

And perverted paper roses

Who pander to each scheme that rat proposes.

When on the rack-and-pinion of retreat

Earn your wayside cigarettes and bread

By giving lessons on the rats’ defeat

Disguised in languages more live than dead:

Tutor yourselves in map-reading and crime

And devil’s courage for the bleak time

When you alone will face the empty plain

Armed only with a visionary brain

That tried to understand how earth and sky

Could meet beyond the reach of feet and eye.

The would-be Rat-destroyers may feel this:

Burdened with a glimpse of emptiness

Night after night, with dreams that kiss

Despair as a king’s seal, and nothingness:

A dull light gleaming on continual fight

In a retreat that leads beyond the end of night.

It was a rabbit skin, without meat

That took me to the fleapit for a treat:

The wasteland that seemed to Mr Eliot death

Nurtured me with passion, life and breath

To prolong for one more generation

A wasteland satellite of veneration:

A bottle-top, a piece of bone, a stone

Marked on no posters or big banners

To catapult against the rodent planners.

… the rock stop and turbo-drill that goes

Through granite like a knife through butter

(Shall I follow Mr Eliot’s nose

And clinch this verse by using ‘gutter’?)

Rock-a-bye-baby, reach the tree top

Sing as you reap the apple crop;

Rob each garbled voice of Wednesday’s ash

Ring out the mardi gras to grab and smash:

Hook-up your ribbons to a new Maypole.

The wasteland was a place where I best played

As a snotty-nosed bottle-chasing raggèd-arsed kid:

From a rusty frame and two cot-wheels I made

A bike that took me on a roll and skid

Between canal banks, tip and plain

And junk shops advertising ‘Guns for Spain’.

I read the tadpole angler quite complete

What Katy did at her first Christmas treat

Envied Monte Cristo’s endless riches

But not Eliza’s shame at her dropped stitches,

The splendid sack of Usher’s houses

By philanthropists with ragged trousers.

In wintertime were rabbit skins fair game

For keeping warm the embers of such knowledge:

The wasteland was my library and college.

What’s past is past, what still to come:

King, queen and godhead of Time’s guide.

Show your bottom-dogs and sparkling fangs

In conspiratorial well-clawed gangs.

Open Baedeker’s Handbook to the Jungle

A thin-leaved blood-bound untried book to plan

All expeditions on, and scan

Its well-mapped footpaths (thornbush to the right):

Mined offices avoid at any cost;

Advice from all contributors is sound

Gathered by ears pressed firmly to the ground.

Ignore policemen if you’re lost

By-pass the Customs, frontier weak at X

Step on the skeletons of vanguard wrecks

Hillslopes good for cover, summit wrong,

Travellers had better go by night

And eat ripe berries as they walk along.

Landmarks described with economic prose:

This cathedral has a mildewed nose

From decades of unmedicated sores.

Decay comes quicker when it flouts Time’s laws.

See this castle? Rotten doors:

King left owing bills for bread and cheese

Queen stored perfumes in deepfreeze

Was tricked for absolution with the whores.

Take those statues by the wall

Carved on a diet of olive-oil and gall:

Unbribable stern servants of the realm

Turned up their noses and let go the helm.

Watch the sky. Watch the warning

Floating down of an autumn morning.

Barricade your colleges and schools

Sharpen slide-rules into fighting tools.

Paper to a depth of thirty inches

May stop a bullet and prove good defences,

But fire will desolate consume and scorch

That to begin needs but a single torch.

A red sky at night will be their delight

And red in the morning the Rats’ night dawning.

Admitted, you gave them ale and telly

But in return took each man’s name and age

And locked his magic in a wicker cage

Burning it in secret while they filled

Unwittingly their bellies after hunger.

You cannot read the writing on the wall:

They were not given bread at all

But food to make them strong (and sane)

Enough to understand your orders.

A meal of pure white bread is bad

When given to a dog the dog goes mad.

The bread of life is of a different grain

It feeds the body wholemeal and the brain.

Slowly, slowly, Dungeness lighthouse

Dim in the distance dipped its wick:

Old Folkestone vowed to thee its country

And Beachy Head was being sick;

But stouter England stood and stouter

From Berwick’s Tweed to Dover Castle

Hugging the Downs beneath its arm

Like an empty paper parcel;

And slowly also big Cape Grey Nose

Lays itself before the boat

Sends its white birds up to catch my

Soul while yet it stays afloat.

Retreat, dig in, retreat

Withdraw your shadow from the crimson

Gutters that run riot down the street.

Retreat, dig in, arrange your coat

As a protective covering

A clever camouflage of antidote.

Retreat still more, still more

Remembering your images and words:

Perfect the principles of fang-and-claw.

The shadows of retreat are wide

Town and desert equally bereft

Of honest hieroglyph or guide.

Release your territory and retreat

Record preserve and memorize

The journey where no drums can rouse nor beat:

Defeat is not the question. Withdraw

Into the hollows of the hills

Until this winter passes into thaw.

Dig in no more. Turn round and fight

Forget the wicked and regret the lame

And travel back the way you came,

In front the darkness, and behind — THE LIGHT.