Complete Poems

by Cecil Day-Lewis

  Living’s cheap and dreams come true;

  Lying manna tempts the belly;

  Crowns are many, claims are few.

  Come along then, come away

  From the rush hour, from the town:

  Blear and overcast today

  Would put a blackcap out of tune,

  Spoil the peacock’s June display.

  Rigid time of driving-belts

  Gives no rest for grace-notes gay:

  Fear and fever, cables, bolts

  Pin the soul, allow no play.

  You’re a poet, so am I:

  No man’s keeper, intimate

  Of breeding earth and brooding sky,

  Irresponsible, remote,

  A cool cloud, creation’s eye.

  Seek not to turn the winter tide

  But to temperate deserts fly:

  Close chain-mail of solitude

  Must protect you or you die.

  Come away then, let us go;

  Lose identity and pass

  Through the still blockade of snow,

  Fear’s frontier, an age of ice:

  Pierce the crust and pass below

  Towards a red volcanic core,

  The warm womb where flesh can grow

  Again and passion sleep secure

  In creative ebb and flow.

  24

  Tempt me no more; for I

  Have known the lightning’s hour,

  The poet’s inward pride,

  The certainty of power.

  Bayonets are closing round.

  I shrink; yet I must wring

  A living from despair

  And out of steel a song.

  Though song, though breath be short,

  I’ll share not the disgrace

  Of those that ran away

  Or never left the base.

  Comrades, my tongue can speak

  No comfortable words,

  Calls to a forlorn hope,

  Gives work and not rewards.

  Oh keep the sickle sharp

  And follow still the plough:

  Others may reap, though some

  See not the winter through.

  Father, who endest all,

  Pity our broken sleep;

  For we lie down with tears

  And waken but to weep.

  And if our blood alone

  Will melt this iron earth,

  Take it. It is well spent

  Easing a saviour’s birth.

  25

  Consider these, for we have condemned them;

  Leaders to no sure land, guides their bearings lost

  Or in league with robbers have reversed the signposts,

  Disrespectful to ancestors, irresponsible to heirs.

  Born barren, a freak growth, root in rubble,

  Fruitlessly blossoming, whose foliage suffocates,

  Their sap is sluggish, they reject the sun.

  The man with his tongue in his cheek, the woman

  With her heart in the wrong place, unhandsome,

  unwholesome;

  Have exposed the new-born to worse than weather,

  Exiled the honest and sacked the seer.

  These drowned the farms to form a pleasure-lake,

  In time of drought they drain the reservoir

  Through private pipes for baths and sprinklers.

  Getters not begetters; gainers not beginners;

  Whiners, no winners; no triers, betrayers;

  Who steer by no star, whose moon means nothing.

  Daily denying, unable to dig:

  At bay in villas from blood relations,

  Counters of spoons and content with cushions

  They pray for peace, they hand down disaster.

  They that take the bribe shall perish by the bribe,

  Dying of dry rot, ending in asylums,

  A curse to children, a charge on the state.

  But still their fears and frenzies infect us;

  Drug nor isolation will cure this cancer:

  It is now or never, the hour of the knife,

  The break with the past, the major operation.

  PART FOUR

  He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo.

  GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

  26

  Junction or terminus – here we alight.

  A myriad tracks converge on this moment,

  This man where all ages and men are married,

  Who shall right him? Who shall determine?

  Standing astonished at the close of day

  We know the worst, we may guess at good:

  Geared too high our power was wasted,

  Who have lost the old way to the happy ending.

  A world behind us the west is in flames,

  Devastated areas, works at a standstill;

  No seed awakes, wary is no hunter,

  The tame are ruined and the wild have fled.

  Where then the saviour, the stop of illness?

  Hidden the mountain was to steel our hearts.

  Is healing here? An untrodden territory

  Promises no coolness, invites but the brave.

  But see! Not far, not fiction, a real one,

  Vibrates like heat-haze full in the sun’s face

  Filling the heart, that chaste and fleet one,

  Rarely my kestrel, my lucky star.

  O man perplexed, here is your answer.

  Alone who soars, who feeds upon earth –

  Him shall you heed and learn where joy is

  The dance of action, the expert eye.

  Now is your moment, O hang-fire heart;

  The ice is breaking, the death-grip relaxes,

  Luck’s turned. Submit to your star and take

  Command, Oh start the attacking movement!

  27

  Wystan, Rex, all of you that have not fled,

  This is our world, this is where we have grown

  Together in flesh and live; though each alone

  Shall join the enclosed order of the dead,

  Enter the silent brotherhood of bone.

  All you that have a cool head and safe hands

  Awaken early, there is much to do;

  Hedges to raze, channels to clear, a true

  Reckoning to find. The other side commands

  Eternity. We have an hour or two.

  Let us speak first against that ancient firm

  Who sell an armament to any cause,

  Fear and Pain brothers: call them bullies and curs

  Who take us into corners and make us squirm,

  Finding the weak spot, fumbling at secret doors.

  Let us tell them plainly now they haven’t a chance,

  We are going about together, we’ve mingled blood,

  Taken a tonic that’s set us up for good;

  Their disguises are tabled, their movements known in advance,

  We have found out who hides them and gives them food.

  Lipcurl, Swiveleye, Bluster, Crock and Queer,

  Mister I’ll-think-it-over, Miss Not-to-day,

  Young Who-the-hell-cares and old Let-us-pray,

  Sir Après-moi-le-déluge. It is here.

  They get their orders. These will have to pay.

  Hear, the ice-wall of winter at our back,

  Spring’s first explosions throbbing across the plain,

  Earth’s diastole, flood-tide of heart and vein:

  Collect your forces for a counter-attack,

  New life is on the way, the relief train.

  28

  Though winter’s barricade delays,

  Another season’s in the air;

  We’ll sow the spring in our young days,

  Found a Virginia everywhere.

  Look where the ranks of crocuses

  Their rebel colours will display

  Coming with quick fire to redress

  The balance of a wintry day.

  Those daffodils that from the mould

  Drawing a sweet
breath soon shall flower,

  With a year’s labour get their gold

  To spend it on a sunny hour.

  They from earth’s centre take their time

  And from the sun what love they need:

  The proud flower burns away its prime,

  Eternity lies in the seed.

  Follow the kestrel, south or north,

  Strict eye, spontaneous wing can tell

  A secret. Where he comes to earth

  Is the heart’s treasure. Mark it well.

  Here he hovers. You’re on the scent;

  Magnetic mountain is not far,

  Across no gulf or continent,

  Not where you think but where you are.

  Stake out your claim. Go downwards. Bore

  Through the tough crust. Oh learn to feel

  A way in darkness to good ore.

  You are the magnet and the steel.

  Out of that dark a new world flowers.

  There in the womb, in the rich veins

  Are tools, dynamos, bridges, towers,

  Your tractors and your travelling-cranes.

  29

  But winter still rides rough-shod upon us,

  Summer comes not for wishing nor warmth at will:

  Passes are blocked and glaciers pen us

  Round the hearth huddled, hoping for a break,

  Playing at patience, reporting ill.

  Aware of changed temperature one shall wake

  And rushing to window arouse companions

  To feel frost surrender, an ice age finished;

  Whose strength shall melt from the mountains and run

  Riot, careering down corries and canyons.

  What floods will rise then through rivers replenished,

  Embankments broken, and bluffs undone,

  Laid low old follies, all landmarks vanished.

  Is it ready for launching, the Argo, the Ark,

  Our transport, our buoyant one, our heart of oak?

  Make haste, put through the emergency order

  For an overtime day, for double shifts working:

  Weather is breaking, tomorrow we must board her,

  Cast off onto chaos and shape a course.

  Many months have gone to her making,

  Wood well-seasoned for watertight doors,

  The old world’s best in her ribs and ballast,

  White-heat, high pressure, the heart of a new

  In boiler, in gadget, in gauge, in screw.

  Peerless on water, Oh proud our palace,

  A home for heroes, the latest of her line;

  A beater to windward, obedient to rudder,

  A steamer into storm, a hurricane-rider,

  Foam-stepper, star-steerer, freighter and fighter –

  Name her, release her, anoint her with wine!

  Whom shall we take with us? The true, the tested,

  Floods over to find a new world and man it,

  Sure-foot, Surveyor, Spark and Strong,

  Those whom winter has wasted, not worsted,

  Good at their jobs for a break-down gang:

  Born haters will blast through debris or granite,

  Willing work on the permanent ways,

  And natural lovers repair the race.

  As needle to north, as wheel in wheel turning,

  Men shall know their masters and women their need,

  Mating and submitting, not dividing and defying,

  Force shall fertilize, mass shall breed.

  Broad let our valleys embrace the morning

  And satisfied see a good day dying,

  Accepting the shadows, sure of seed.

  30

  You who would come with us,

  Think what you stand to lose –

  An assured income, the will

  In your favour and the feel

  Of firmness underfoot.

  For travellers by this boat

  Nothing to rest the eyes on

  But a migrant’s horizon,

  No fixtures or bric-à-brac –

  Wave walls without a break.

  Old acquaintance on the quay

  Have come to clutch your knee –

  Merry-Andrew and Cassandra,

  Squeamish, Sponge and Squanderer,

  The Insurance Agent, the Vicar,

  Hard Cheese the Confidence-Tricker,

  Private Loot, General Pride,

  And Lust the sultry-eyed.

  Others you hate to leave

  Wave with autumnal grief,

  The best of what has been,

  Props of an English scene;

  A day we may not recover,

  A camp you must quit for ever.

  Now, if you will, retract.

  For we are off to act

  Activity of young

  And cut the ravelled string.

  Calm yourselves, you that seek

  The flame, and whose flesh is weak

  Must keep it in cold storage:

  For we shall not encourage

  The would-be hero, the nervous

  Martyr to rule or serve us.

  Stand forward for volunteers

  Who have tempered their loves and fears

  In the skilled process of time,

  Whose spirit is blown to a flame

  That leaves no mean alloys.

  You who have heard a voice –

  The siren in the morning

  That gives the worker warning,

  The whisper from the loam

  Promising life to come,

  Manifesto of peace

  Read in an altered face –

  Who have heard; and believe it true

  That new life must break through.

  31

  In happier times

  When the heart is whole and the exile king returned

  We may sing shock of opposing teams

  And electric storms of love again.

  Our voices may be tuned

  To solo flight, to record-breaking plane;

  Looking down from hill

  We may follow with fresh felicities

  Wilful the light, the wayward motion of trees,

  In happier times when the heart is whole.

  In happier times

  When the land is ours, these springs shall irrigate

  Good growing soil until it teems,

  Redeemed from mortgage, drilled to obey;

  But still must flow in spate.

  We’ll focus stars again; though now must be

  Map and binoculars

  Outlining vision, bringing close

  Natural features that will need no glass

  In happier times, when the land is ours.

  Make us a wind

  To shake the world out of this sleepy sickness

  Where flesh has dwindled and brightness waned!

  New life multiple in seed and cell

  Mounts up to brace our slackness.

  Oppression’s passion, a full organ swell

  Through our throats welling wild

  Of angers in unison arise

  And hunger haunted with a million sighs,

  Make us a wind to shake the world!

  Make us the wind

  From a new world that springs and gathers force,

  Clearing the air, cleaning the wound;

  Sets masses in motion and whips the blood.

  Oh they shall find him fierce

  Who cling to relics, dead wood shall feel his blade.

  Rudely the last leaves whirled,

  A storm on fire, dry ghosts, shall go in

  Fear and be laid in the red of their own ruin.

  Make us the wind from a new world!

  32

  You that love England, who have an ear for her music,

  The slow movement of clouds in benediction,

  Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands,

  Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully;

  Ceaseless the leaves’ counterpoin
t in a west wind lively,

  Blossom and river rippling loveliest allegro,

  And the storms of wood strings brass at year’s finale:

  Listen. Can you not hear the entrance of a new theme?

  You who go out alone, on tandem or on pillion,

  Down arterial roads riding in April,

  Or sad beside lakes where hill-slopes are reflected

  Making fires of leaves, your high hopes fallen:

  Cyclists and hikers in company, day excursionists,

  Refugees from cursed towns and devastated areas;

  Know you seek a new world, a saviour to establish

  Long-lost kinship and restore the blood’s fulfilment.

  You who like peace, good sorts, happy in a small way

  Watching birds or playing cricket with schoolboys,

  Who pay for drinks all round, whom disaster chose not;

  Yet passing derelict mills and barns roof-rent

  Where despair has burnt itself out – hearts at a standstill,

  Who suffer loss, aware of lowered vitality;

  We can tell you a secret, offer a tonic; only

  Submit to the visiting angel, the strange new healer.

  You above all who have come to the far end, victims

  Of a run-down machine, who can bear it no longer;

  Whether in easy chairs chafing at impotence

  Or against hunger, bullies and spies preserving

  The nerve for action, the spark of indignation –

  Need fight in the dark no more, you know your enemies.

  You shall be leaders when zero hour is signalled,

  Wielders of power and welders of a new world.

  33

  Come for a walk in our pleasant land:

  We must wake up early if we want to understand

  The length and breadth and depth of decay

  Has corrupted our vowels and clogged our bowels,

  Impaired our breathing, eaten pride away.

  What do they believe in – these yellow yes-men,

  Pansies, politicians, prelates and pressmen,

  Boneless wonders, unburstable bouncers,

  Back-slappers, cheer-leaders, bribed announcers

  Broadcasting All-Clear as the raiders draw near;

  Would mend a burst dam with sticking-plaster

  And hide with shocked hand the yawn of disaster –

  What do they believe in? A god of gold,

  A gilt-edged proposition; but it seems they’ve been sold.

  All you fine ladies, once you were flowers

  England was proud of, rich blooms, good growers;

  But overblown now; and we can’t afford you