I Eat Poetry

Cross-post from war_poetry:

A Post-Mortem

Searching for souvenirs among some rubble,
A post-atomic-warfare man observed
That " those who made this little bit of trouble
Got only what they asked for and deserved"
Then, in a kindlier afterthought's release,
He pitied " them that only asked for peace".

by Siegfried Sassoon

Old Fashioned Weather

This New Year's nightfall, clinching grasp of cold
Began to blur my warm room's window panes,
Iced over soon with traceries formed like fronds.
Hard weather, sexton's ally for the old,
Nevertheless jogs memory that regains
The glow and glee of boyhood skating ponds.

Indulgent of that obvious thought, I've tried
Conclusions with another, also trite,
Yet welcome, in an age of values lost.
Traditions perish; topsy-turvyfied,
Our once well-wonted usages take flight;
But not so when we get a spell of frost

Weather's the same for all. Though Science tells
The world to-day what Newton never guessed,
He woke to sunshine sparkling on crisp snow;
Heard, clear across white pastures, midnight bells,
And thought, as I do now, with quiet zest,
Of New Year's Eve a century ago.

by Siegfried Sassoon

South Wind

Where have you been, South Wind, this May-day morning,—
With larks aloft, or skimming with the swallow,
Or with blackbirds in a green, sun-glinted thicket?

Oh, I heard you like a tyrant in the valley;
Your ruffian haste shook the young, blossoming orchards;
You clapped rude hands, hallooing round the chimney,
And white your pennons streamed along the river.

You have robbed the bee, South Wind, in your adventure,
Blustering with gentle flowers; but I forgave you
When you stole to me shyly with scent of hawthorn.

By Siegfried Sassoon

Cross-post from war_poetry:

A Dream

I met a stranger on the brink of sleep:
Hooded he stood, whose eyes acknowledged sorrow.
He wrote across the darkness of my mind
One word, Tomorrow .

Through dream we went. Our way was cragged and steep,
And what the future told we might not find.
Then in that face which I had thought unknown
I recognised my own.

"Stranger," I said, "since you and I are one,
"Let us go back. Let us undo what's done."

by Siegfried Sassoon

Cross-post from war_poetry:

A Prayer from 1936

We are souls in hell; who hear no gradual music
Advancing on the air, on wave-lengths walking.
We are lost in life; who listen for hope and hear but
The tyrant and the politician talking.

Out of the nothingness of night they tell
Our need of guns, our servitude to strife.
O heaven of music, absolve us from this hell
Unto unmechanized mastery over life.

by Siegfried Sassoon

Cross-post from war_poetry:

To Leonide Massine in Cleopatra

O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour,
Leaping along the verge of death and night,
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight
Four long years past, discovering pride and power.

You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall
Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again.
But not to ebbing music were they slain
Who sleep in ruined graves, beyond recall;
Who, following phantom-glory, friend and foe,
Into the darkness that was War must go;
Blind; banished from desire.
O mortal heart
Be still; you have drained the cup; you have played your part.

By Siegfried Sassoon
(Lennel, October 1918}

Breach of Decorum

I have seen a man at Lady Lucre's table
Who stuck to serious subjects; spoke of Art
As if he were in earnest and unable
To ascertain its function in the smart
World where it shares a recreational part
With Bridge, best-selling Fiction, and the Stable.

I have heard that man (so destitute of nous
That he'd neglected even to be "well-known;"
"Whatever made her ask him to her house?")
Talking to Lady Lucre in a tone
Of keen conviction that her social passion,
Purged of the volatilities of fashion,
Toiled after truth and spiritual perfection
Without regard for costume or complexion.

I have seen her fail, with petulant replies,
To localize him in his social senses:
I have observed her evening-party eyes
Evicted from their savoir-faire defenses.
And while his intellectual gloom encroached
Upon the scintillance of champagne chatter,
In impotent embarrassment she broached
Golf, Goodwood Races, and the Cowes Regatta.

The luncheon over, Lady Lucre's set
Lolled on her lawn and lacked an epithet
Sufficiently severe for such a creature. . . .
"Such dreadful taste!" "A positive blasphemer!"
"He actually referred to our Redeemer
As the world's greatest Socialistic teacher!"

by Siegfried Sassoon

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Elsewhere

Let Congresses consider how to avoid
These bomb abominations being employed
In suicidal conflict—how
To unannihilate the future now.

Since nothing that one man can think or say
Could prove effective in the feeblest way,
He, for appeasement of his tortured mind,
Must look elsewhere to be
Defended and befriended and resigned
And fortified and free.

Elsewhere. The indestructible exists
Beyond found formulas of scientists.
Our spiritual situation stood the same
In other epochs when
To thwart all ministries of mercy came
The arrogant inventiveness of men.

by Siegfried Sassoon

December Stillness

December stillness, teach me through your trees
That loom along the west, one with the land,
The veiled evangel of your mysteries.
While nightfall, sad and spacious, on the down
Deepens, and dusk imbues me, where I stand,
With grave diminishings of green and brown,
Speak, roofless Nature, your instinctive words;
And let me learn your secret from the sky,
Following a flock of steadfast-journeying birds
In lone remote migration beating by.
December stillness, crossed by twilight roads,
Teach me to travel far and bear my loads.

by Siegfried Sassoon

Solar Eclipse

Observe these blue solemnities of sky
Offering for the academes of after-ages
A mythologic welkin freaked with white!

Listen : one tiny tinkling rivulet
Accentuates the super-sultry stillness
That drones on ripening landscapes which imply
Serene Parnassus plagued with amorous goats.
* * * *
Far down the vale Apollo has pursued
The noon-bedazzled nymph whose hunted heart
Holds but the trampling panic whence it fled,
And now the heavens are piled with darkening trouble
And counter-march of clouds that troop intent
Fire-crested into conflict.
Daphne turns
At the wood's edge in bronze and olive gloom:
Sickness assails the sun whose blazing disc
Dwindles : the Eden of those auburn slopes
Lours in the tarnished copper of eclipse.

Yet virgin in her god-impelled approach
To Graeco-Roman ravishment, she waits
While the unsated python slides to crush
Her lust-eluding fleetness. Envious Jove
Rumbles Olympus. All the classic world
Leans breathless toward the legend she creates.

From thunderous vapour smites the immortal beam . . .
Then, crowned with fangs of foliage, flames the god.
* * * *
' Apollo ! ' ... Up the autumn valley echoes
A hollow shout from nowhere. Daphne's limbs
Lapse into laureldom : green-shadowed flesh
Writhes aborescent; glamour obscures her gaze
With blind and bossed distortion. She escapes.

by Siegfried Sassoon