Louis Golding

“ The curtain of bird-song and magic dawn
From the sullen red windows of Hell.
Rattle of rifle and shriek of gun,
Gas-cloud sickly and heavy and dun,
Death has taken his armies in hand,
And the bodies lie countless in No Man's Land.
Out of the shock of the storm
Where the foul winds meet and cry,
Something drops down at my feet,
A little brown body and sweet,
A little dead body and warm.
The tiny dead throat shall sing no more,
Nor the quick eyes flash nor the swift wings soar;
But the shells shall hurtle, the grim guns roar,
O skylark out of the sky! ”

“ So now the world consisted but of trees
And dogs and beetles livid with disease,
And babies blue with fleas.
Trees, dogs, and beetles perished from the day.
Like flies brought crawling earthwards by a spray,
The babies dropped away.
Now truly War seemed ended. Mars was pained
Beyond expression till he ascertained,
Two babes, thank God! remained.
He fired them with the fury of all wars.
A bloody hunger stung their toothless jaws.
They squealed—"The Cause! The Cause!"
Black to the blinding noon they foamed and swore.
Each from his brother's breast the red heart tore. ”

“ JUDÆUS ERRANS He hath no place to rest his head.
O happy nations, weep indeed.
He is forlorn till he be dead.
O pity him his wretched meed,
His wounds that bleed.
There is no resting in his eyes,
And he hath scars upon his feet.
He is a stranger to all skies.
He walks sad-eyed along the street,
And shadow-wise.
For with the dawn must he depart,
And with the sunset make his way.
All day he bears an aching heart,
All night his aching sorrows stay,
Yea, night and day. ”

“ Such purposeless and iron wings
Obscure our mortal music quite?
Such gloom to monstrous gloom outflings
The stenches of a churchyard night?
We are no more for God or Sin
Than parasites in rotting hair,
No different but only in
The boundlessness of our despair?
Glories have sprung before our gaze
From the wet wood the grey tide warps!
We have heard peals of music blaze
Sheer from the cold heart of a corpse!
GHOST AND BODY
I that am wiser than most,
Have yielded the tract of my ghost
To a panting and flat-eyed ghost who gathers these useless things. ”

“ Into the blaze of khaki they provide.
Like a trapped animal you crouch and choke
In the packed carriage where the veterans smoke
And tell such pitiless tales of Over There,
They stop your heart dead short and freeze your hair.
Your body's like a flower on a snapt stalk,
Your head hangs from your neck as blank as chalk.
What horrors haunt you, head upon your breast!
... O but you'll die as bravely as the rest!
DURING THE BATTLE
O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days!
O the thunder of the wings through the gloom! ”

“ The whine of the wings of Death through the dark!
A sunset of flame, a moon of blood!
—The South red lands!
THE NEW TRADE In the market-places they have made
A dolorous new trade.
Now you will see in the fierce naphtha-light,
Piled hideously to sight,
Dead limbs of men bronzed in the over-seas,
Bomb-wrenched from elbows and knees;
Torn feet, that would, unwearied by harsh loads,
Have tramped steep moorland roads;
Torn hands that would have moulded exquisitely
Rare things for God to see. ”

“ The slaying of the eldest born.
ATHENS NOW
Behold Athens! What is Athens now?
Cinders and weeds where the eyeballs were, filth for
the marble brow.
Ilissus, Ilissus of the plain?
—Sardine-tins and a dead cat in a drain!
Dead, dead, dead are the Caryatids
Because of the horror that smote their petal-thin lids.
And the Parthenon now is a jawful of yellow teeth
In the snarling skull of an animal humped in death.
For Athens is only a squalor of traders that hope
To retire on the profits from soap. ”

“ And the trousers of half of the children of Pallas are
dirty with grease,
And the other half ardently brush them and keep them
in crease.
Then pray, O London, my city, when you are dead,
That none know the place where you reared your mad proud head;
That there be not a mound nor a stone nor even a tree,
But only the ignorant river or the desert sea!
DOWN TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate,
The droning choruses of Fate.
They walk the length of every wind,
The women who sin, the women who have sinned. ”

“ With many sad things!
Shall we come again with singing
Where the plover sings?
CLOUD END
THE GALLANT ROAD
(For my School—without permission)
Grant us, O Lord, to do the thing
Clean men and boys have always done;
These works to do, these songs to sing,
The gallant road to run.
Grant us, O Lord, that we go straight
Along the path where shines the sun;
These things to love, these things to hate,
The gallant road to run.
Grant us, O Lord, to win the fight
That all the cleanly hearts have won,
Having sure feet, even at night
The gallant road to run. ”

“ All that I drink, all food I eat,
Is my Lord's blood and body sweet.
But if a moth should singe his wings,
The world is black with dismal things.
And if a strangled sparrow fall,
There is not any God at all. ”

“ You heaped in sombre ranks against the gloom?"
They murmur ceaselessly and without haste,
"Our arms are empty and our wombs are waste."
"Where are the men that marched into the dusk?"
They say with voices withered like a husk.
"Night is like cinders: day is lean and stern.
Our hearts are parched with thirsting; yea, we burn. ”

“ We have come with a gladness terrible to behold.
We have come to reclaim the Godhead that was sold.
The levins we shall loosen ye have not ever known,
And the breath of our singing shall fall on you like stone.
Our weapons shall be flame and the blades be keen,
And they shall not rest again till the skies be clean. ”

“ He groans no more: his lips become leaden and cold!
And ever the sun flashes forth like a sword from its sheath,
And dazzles the dawn with terrors of scarlet and gold.
The guns snarl out like a dog reluctant and grim. ”

“ And did you fly thro' boyland dells
To catch the songs of youthful kings,
And fly before the flight of Springs?
—But there's no room in here for wings,
Where Life is only these three things—
A lift, a grid, a screech of bells. ”

“ But O the bonnet that Liza wears, it is the
summit of her pride;
A big limp feather hangs over her nose and
two more hang on either side.
There's no more stately woman than Liza,
be she the sought of a score of kings.
(Liza is a shadowy woman, selling shadowy things.) ”

“ To monstrous things and vain,
Burned, broken, buried, he,
He is this smell of earth,
This dead moist smell of rain!
GERMAN BOY
German boy with cold blue eyes,
In the cold and blue moonrise,
I who live and still shall know
Flowers that smell and winds that blow,
I who live to walk again,
Fired the shot that broke your brain. ”

“ The streets are moreover crooked things to see;
There is no object anywhere will stand and bide.
The goblins are assembled in a mad-moon crowd
Upon the hazy summit of the palpitating hill.
Let the things that have no voice shout out loud!
Let them dance, the fickle things, and have their fill! ”

“ YELLOW SATINS
(To Janey Golding)
When I am rich, mother,
You will sit in satins,
Yellow satins, looking out upon the street.
You will smile out on the neighbours,
Who will have no yellow satins;
And there'll be a great big hassock to rest your tired feet. ”

“ Over his turf
A bird like a devil
Is flapping and fluttering.
The poisonous bird
Whose scarlet eye glowers,
The poisonous flowers
With petals unclean
Are the only things heard
And the only things seen. ”

“ Before a mortal be a tree,
He first must be a blade of grass!"
WOUNDED SOLDIERS
Have you no arms, soldier?
See, I have two.
Whatever deeds for arms there be,
These still I can do.
Out of clay I still can make
Living things like me and you. ”

“ I shall lose body and miry feet,
Float with the clouds and sway with the wheat.
I am a fool and foolisher than
Anything else that is not a man.
For of all the things that I see or feel,
The I-that-is-I is far the least real. ”

“ Grey as before-dawn rivers, willow-stirred,
Brown as a singing-bird;
But all stare from the dark into the dark,
Reproachful, tense, and stark.
Eyes heaped on trays and in broad baskets there,
Feet, hands, and ropes of hair.
In the market-places ... and women buy ...
... Naphtha glares ... hawkers cry ...
Fat men rub hands.... ”

“ They are showing how we lie
With our bodies run dry:
The attitudes we take
When impaled upon a stake.
These and other things they show
In the gallery where the fat men go.
In the gallery where the fat men go
They're exhibiting our guts
Horse-betrampled in the ruts ”

“ From 'Erbert, chlorine-gassed and green for breath) .
O what green seas sweep winds through Camberwell,
Through all her islands where the palm-trees heave!
O winding down the channels steals a bell
Calling poor weary lads to bathe at eve!
God blawst it! Camberwell!
(This from old Bob, whose side
Is pierced with wounds like Jesus crucified) .
"IN THE GALLERY WHERE THE FAT MEN GO"
("GREAT PICTURES OF THE SOMME OFFENSIVE,
DAY BY DAY. THE ACTUAL FIGHTING") ”

“ Judæus Errans
Cold Stars
Reactionary
Late
Wind of Black Night
Yellow Satins
My Mother's Portrait
To A. L. O.
The Dark Knight of the Road
To the Swift
Green Wind
The Midmost Field in Kent
Murmuryngeham
Winchester Downs
Cycling in October
The Shepherd
Derwentwater
"I vowed that I would be a Tree"
Wounded Soldiers
Still Life in France
I Dream'd I Died
Flowers in War
Evening—Kent
Black Magic
A Soldier Dying
At Last War Ends
SORROW OF WAR
LILAC, LABURNUM
Lilac, lilac, laburnum,
How shall you bloom this Spring?
Gathering birds, gathering birds,
How shall you sing? ”