Repression of War Experience

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1. Independence Listen… Thud-thud Can you hear it? Thud-thud It’s the beat of my heart. Thud-thud I shall live on. Thud-thud My tortured soul Is not willing to rest. Thud-thud-thud This war has just begun. I’ve learned how to laugh In the face of evil now. Thud-thud-thud You can no longer hurt me, As long as I […]...
2. Songs Of Experience: Introduction Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, & Future sees Whose ears have heard The Holy Word, That walk’d among the ancient trees. Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew; That might controll. The starry pole; And fallen fallen light renew! O Earth O Earth return! Arise from out the […]...
3. There Is a Solemn Wind Tonight There is a solemn wind to-night That sings of solemn rain; The trees that have been quiet so long Flutter and start again. The slender trees, the heavy trees, The fruit trees laden and proud, Lift up their branches to the wind That cries to them so loud. The little bushes and the plants Bow […]...
4. Screw-Guns Smokin’ my pipe on the mountings, sniffin’ the mornin’ cool, I walks in my old brown gaiters along o’ my old brown mule, With seventy gunners be’ind me, an’ never a beggar forgets It’s only the pick of the Army that handles the dear little pets ‘Tss! ‘Tss! For you all love the screw-guns the […]...
5. Holy Thursday (Experience) Is this a holy thing to see. In a rich and fruitful land. Babes reduced to misery. Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine. And their […]...
6. Sanctuary This is the bricklayer; hear the thud Of his heavy load dumped down on stone. His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood, His smoking mortar whiter than bone. Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick Straight by the plumb-line’s shivering length; Make my marvelous wall so thick Dead nor living may shake its strength. Full as a […]...
7. The Songs of the Lathes 1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow The fans and the beltings they roar round me. The power is shaking the floor round me Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over. It is good for me to be here! Guns in Flanders […]...
8. From the Ansty Experience (a) They seek to celebrate the word Not to bring their knives out on a poem Dissecting it to find a heart Whose beat lies naked on a table Not to score in triumph on a line No sensitive would put a nostril to But simply to receive it as an Offering glimpsing the sacred […]...
9. Intorduction to the Songs of Experience Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient tree; Calling the lapsed soul, And weeping in the evening dew; That might control The starry pole, And fallen, fallen light renew! ‘O Earth, O Earth, return! Arise from out the […]...
10. A Library Of Skulls Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead. Here’s a skull Who, before he lost his fleshy parts And lower bones, once Walked beside a river (we’re in the poetry section Now) his head full of love And loneliness; and this smaller skull, In the sociology stacks, […]...
11. Long Guns THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns. And there was no land for a man, no land for a country, Unless guns sprang up And spoke their language. The how of running the world was all in guns. The law of a God keeping sea and land apart, The law of a child sucking […]...
12. An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Kar Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs, The not-incurious in God’s handiwork (This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul) To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what […]...
13. William Street The red globe of light, the liquor green, The pulsing arrows and the running fire Spilt on the stones, go deeper than a stream; You find this ugly, I find it lovely Ghosts’ trousers, like the dangle of hung men, In pawn-shop windows, bumping knee by knee, But none inside to suffer or condemn; You […]...
14. Introduction to the Songs of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
15. Piping Down the Valleys Wild Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again.’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
16. Reeds of Innocence Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: ‘Pipe a song about a Lamb!’ So I piped with merry cheer. ‘Piper, pipe that song again;’ So I piped: he wept to hear. ‘Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe; Sing thy […]...
17. Songs Of Innocence: Introduction Piping down the valleys wild Piping songs of pleasant glee On a cloud I saw a child. And he laughing said to me. Pipe a song about a Lamb: So I piped with merry chear, Piper, pipe that song again So I piped, he wept to hear. Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe Sing thy […]...
18. Welsh experience called out by the sun This easter saturday morning I’m sitting on a bank In pistyllgwyn (house of the sacred spring) Against a tall oak (close to a daffodil-clump) Overlooking the road Between brechfa and abergorlech On the west side of the valley Of the afon cothi Reading a poem by taliesin From the sixth […]...
19. With No Experience In Such Matters To hold a damaged sparrow Under water until you feel it die Is to know a small something About the mind; how, for example, It blames the cat for the original crime, How it wants praise for its better side. And yet it’s as human As pulling the plug on your Dad Whose world has […]...
20. None can experience sting None can experience sting Who Bounty have not known The fact of Famine could not be Except for Fact of Corn Want is a meagre Art Acquired by Reverse The Poverty that was not Wealth Cannot be Indigence....
21. The Chimney-Sweeper (Experience) A little black thing among the snow: Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe! Where are thy father & mother? say? They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath. And smil’d among the winters snow: They clothed me in the clothes of death. And taught me […]...
22. Experience is the Angled Road Experience is the Angled Road Preferred against the Mind By Paradox the Mind itself Presuming it to lead Quite Opposite How Complicate The Discipline of Man Compelling Him to Choose Himself His Preappointed Pain...
23. Death sets a Thing significant Death sets a Thing significant The Eye had hurried by Except a perished Creature Entreat us tenderly To ponder little Workmanships In Crayon, or in Wool, With “This was last Her fingers did” Industrious until The Thimble weighed too heavy The stitches stopped by themselves And then ’twas put among the Dust Upon the Closet […]...
24. Nurses Song (Experience) When the voices of children. are heard on the green And whisprings are in the dale: The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, My face turns green and pale. Then come home my children. the sun is gone down And the dews of night arise Your spring & your day. are wasted […]...
25. Falling Asleep Voices moving about in the quiet house: Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom Crowded with whispering trees; across the park A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: And I know that the clouds are moving across the […]...
26. Sonnet XLVI: Plain-Path'd Experience Plain-path’d Experience, th’unlearned’s guide, Her simple followers evidently shows Sometimes what Schoolmen scarcely can decide, Nor yet wise Reason absolutely knows. In making trial of a murther wrought, If the vile actors of the heinous deed Near the dead body happily be brought, Oft it hath been prov’d the breathless corse will bleed. She’s coming […]...
27. The Piper AGAIN I hear you piping, for I know the tune so well, – You rouse the heart to wander and be free, Tho’ where you learned your music, not the God of song can tell, For you pipe the open highway and the sea. O piper, lightly footing, lightly piping on your way, Tho’ your […]...
28. Iron GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns, Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. Shovels, Broad, iron shovels, Scooping […]...
29. Many Inventions ‘Less you want your toes trod of you’d better get back at once, For the bullocks are walking two by two, The byles are walking two by two, And the elephants bring the guns. Ho! Yuss! Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns. Jiggery-jolty to and fro, Each as big as a launch in tow Blind-dumb-broad-breeched beggars o’ battering-guns! My […]...
30. A Good Boy I woke before the morning, I was happy all the day, I never said an ugly word, but smiled and stuck to play. And now at last the sun is going down behind the wood, And I am very happy, for I know that I’ve been good. My bed is waiting cool and fresh, with […]...
31. "Mike Teavee…&quot The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare […]...
32. Errata Where it says snow Read teeth-marks of a virgin Where it says knife read You passed through my bones Like a police-whistle Where it says table read horse Where it says horse read my migrant’s bundle Apples are to remain apples Each time a hat appears Think of Isaac Newton Reading the Old Testament Remove […]...
33. The Widow at Windsor ‘Ave you ‘eard o’ the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on ‘er ‘ead? She ‘as ships on the foam she ‘as millions at ‘ome, An’ she pays us poor beggars in red. (Ow, poor beggars in red!) There’s ‘er nick on the cavalry ‘orses, There’s ‘er mark on the medical stores An’ […]...
34. Smoke I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers. Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind. I sit in a chair […]...
35. Television The most important thing we’ve learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set Or better still, just don’t install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we’ve been, We’ve watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare […]...
36. A Song Of Winter Weather It isn’t the foe that we fear; It isn’t the bullets that whine; It isn’t the business career Of a shell, or the bust of a mine; It isn’t the snipers who seek To nip our young hopes in the bud: No, it isn’t the guns, And it isn’t the Huns It’s the MUD, MUD, […]...
37. Pipe Smoker Because I love the soothing weed And am of sober type, I’d choose me for a friend in need A man who smokes a pipe. A cove who hasn’t much to say, And spits into the fire, Puffing like me a pipe of clay, Corn-cob or briar. A chap original of thought, With cheery point […]...
38. The Anxious Dead O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear Above their heads the legions pressing on: (These fought their fight in time of bitter fear, And died not knowing how the day had gone.) O flashing muzzles, pause, and let them see The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar; Then let your mighty chorus […]...
39. Good Old Moon When I was a boy I called the moon a White plate of jade, sometimes it looked Like a great mirror hanging in the sky, First came the two legs of the fairy And the cassia tree, but for whom the rabbit Kept on pounding medical herbs, I Just could not guess. Now the moon […]...
40. I Stood With the Dead I Stood with the Dead, so forsaken and still: When dawn was grey I stood with the Dead. And my slow heart said, ‘You must kill, you must kill: ‘Soldier, soldier, morning is red’. On the shapes of the slain in their crumpled disgrace I stared for a while through the thin cold rain… ‘O […]...