The Shapes, by Mervyn Peake

What are these shapes that stare where once strong houses
Rose with their sounding halls and rooms of breath?
No, not their skeletons for those have fallen
Dragging to earth
The colored muscles from a thousand walls,
And all the slow
Articulate organs that are now
The rubble that a cold well of the night
Erects its height
Of re-assembled emptiness upon.
What are these shapes that rise so chill and flat?
These shapes with pieces torn out of their sides?
Jagged from sky to pavement, laying bare
The secrets of a sliced blue nursery
Where painted jungles flake; or some grey room
Of dismal history that only now
Holds traffic with the day. Behind each other
Rank behind rank their wounded faces stare
In silent profile though their skulls have gone.
Like squares of vast and rotten cardboard ripped
Into these contours stiller than the brain
Of him who tore them ever could conceive,
They stare and stare.
They are the walls of skin, the skin of brick,
The brick that warded off the sun and moon;
Yet still the ceaseless elements attack them
Though what they guarded from the wind has gone.
The winds can circle now where blood ran warm
And where the heart once stood the cold mist hovers,
Or gusts that whirl about each vacant womb
In whistling spirals, carry through the darkness
In fitful flight, torn papers that, bespattered,
Flutter their hollow wings.
What of this skin that only yesterday
Enveloped some far architect's bright boxes?
The colored boxes that beyond black blinds,
Suffused with their especial emanations,
Were each a ranging world in microcosm,
The tinted projects and the memories,
The tear of sweetness and the blood of anger.
What of this skin that once enclosed all this?
Oh it will fall to darkness, to cold darkness
For it is ichabod and Life had fallen
Down into darkness through its quickening crate,
And it will fall to darkness, to cold darkness
Where nothing stirs among the dynasties.
The rubble that is rotting in the rain
Exhales the death of Warsaw and Pompeii
Guernica, Troy and Coventry - all cities,
And every breathing building that died burning.
The shapes departing and the brick returning.