Here

A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling

Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows

Where only salesmen and relations come

And traffic all night north; swerving through fields

Within a terminate and fishy-smelling

Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,

Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,

And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields

Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;

Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude

And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges

Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,

Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,

And the widening river's slow presence,

Isolate villages, where removed lives

The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:

Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,

Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster

Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,

Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,

Luminously-peopled air ascends;

And residents from raw estates, brought down

And past the poppies bluish neutral distance

The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,

Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach

Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -

Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:

Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,

Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers

--Philip Larkin

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES

NIGHT VOICES

By Siegfried Sassoon

Thomas Ligotti

I knew a simple soldier boy

Why should you have to live?

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

We dont.

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

Why should you have to suffer?

And whistled early with the lark.

We dont.
Why shouldnt you have to die?

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

We did.

DARKNESS

Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour

They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.

The brows of men by the despairing light

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up

And men forgot their passions in the dread

With mad disquietude on the dull sky,

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

The pall of a past world; and then again

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

With curses cast them down upon the dust,

And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,

And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd

The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,

And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

The habitations of all things which dwell,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes

Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,

Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd

And men were gather'd round their blazing homes

And twin'd themselves among the multitude,

To look once more into each other's face;

Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.

Happy were those who dwelt within the eye

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:

Did glut himself again: a meal was bought

A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

All earth was but one thought--and that was death

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Of famine fed upon all entrails--men

Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--

Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,

And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--

Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead

A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.

Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,

The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,

But with a piteous and perpetual moan,

And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;

And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand

Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

Which answer'd not with a caress--he died.

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd

The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two

They slept on the abyss without a surge--

Of an enormous city did survive,

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;

The dying embers of an altar-place

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need

For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,

Of aid from them--She was the Universe.

And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Next, Please
by Philip Larkin

We think each one will heave to and unload

All good into our lives, all we are owed

Always too eager for the future, we

For waiting so devoutly and so long.

Pick up bad habits of expectancy.

But we are wrong:

Something is always approaching; every day

Till then we say,

Only one ship is seeking us, a blackSailed unfamiliar, towing at her back

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear

A huge and birdless silence. In her wake

Sparkling armada of promises draw near.

No waters breed or break.

How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks

Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits

Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

L'Infinito
by Leopardi

On Re-reading Baudelaire
by Clark Ashton Smith

I've always loved this lonesome hill

And this hedge that hides

Forgetting still what holier lilies bloom

The entire horizon, almost, from sight.

Secure within the garden of lost years,

But sitting here in a daydream, I picture

We water with the fitfulness of tears

The boundless spaces away out there, silences

Wan myrtles with an acrid sick perfume;

Deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush

Lethean lotus, laurels of our doom,

In which my heart is hardly a beat

Dark amarant with tall unswaying spears,

From fear. And hearing the wind

Await funereal autumn and its fears

Rush rustling through these bushes,

In this grey land that sullen suns illume.

I pit its speech against infinite silence-And a notion of eternity floats to mind,

Ivy and rose and hellebore we twine.

And the dead seasons, and the season

Voluptuous as love, or keen as grief,

Beating here and now, and the sound of it. So,

Some fleeting fragrance lures us in the gloom

In this immensity my thoughts all drown;

To Paphian dells or vales of Proserpine. . . .

And it's easeful to be wrecked in seas like these.

But all the flowers, with dark or pallid leaf,

Become at last a garland for the tomb.

Went they in the owls' moonlight.

As they passed, the common wild
Like a murderer jester smiled,

From the German

Dimpled twice with nettly graves.

by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

You may mark her garment white,

In the night-wind how it waves:

'Come with me, thou gentle maid,

The stars are strong, and make a shade
Of yew across your mother's tomb;
Leave your chamber's vine-leaved gloom,
Leave your harp-strings, loved one,
'Tis our hour'; the robber said
'Yonder comes the goblin's sun,
For when men are still in bed,
Day begins with the old dead.
Leave your flowers so dewed with weeping,
And our feverish baby sleeping;
Come to me, thou gentle maid,
'Tis our hour'. The robber said.

II
To the wood, whose shade is night,

The night-wind to the churchyard flew,

And whispered underneath the yew;
'Mother churchyard in my breath,
I've a lady's sigh of death,'
-'Sleep thou there, thou robber's wife.'
Said he, clasping his wet knife.

But the disease of feeling germed,

And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed

Before Life and After

How long, how long?

by Thomas Hardy

A Requiem
by James Thomson (B.V.)

A time there wasas one may guess

Thou hast lived in pain and woe,

And as, indeed, earths testimonies tell

Thou hast lived in grief and fear;

Before the birth of consciousness,

Now thine heart can dread no blow,

When all went well.

Now thine eyes can shed no tear:

Storms round us shall beat and rave;

None suffered sickness, love, or loss,

Thou art sheltered in the grave.

None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings;

None cared whatever crash or cross

Thou for long, long years hast borne,

Brought wrack to things.

Bleeding through Lifes wilderness,

Heavy loss and wounding scorn;

If something ceased, no tongue bewailed,

If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung;
If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed,

Now thine heart is burdenless:

Vainly rest for ours we crave;
Thine is quiet in the grave.

No sense was stung.

We must toil with pain and care,

We must front tremendous Fate,

Cities at daybreak are no one's,

We must fight with dark Despair:

and have no names.

Thou dost dwell in solemn state,

And I, too, have no name,

Couched triumphant, calm and brave,

dawn, the stars growing pale,

In the ever-holy grave.

the train picking up speed.

At Daybreak
by Adam Zagajewski

Tighten
by Joel Lane

From the train windows at daybreak,

I saw empty cities sleeping,
sprawled defenselessly on their backs
like great beasts.
Through the vast squares, only my thoughts
and a biting wind wandered;

It's best to keep your head down

when the wind blows the sleet back
into the face of sunlight;
or your love pins you to the bed
like a drunk fumbling with a door-key,

birds started to wake in the trees,

and in the thick pelts of the parks

and his mouth is a wounded heel.

stray cats' eyes gleamed.

Don't cough the words; just inhale.

The shy light of morning, eternal

The world carries itself. Labour

debutante, was reflected in the shop windows.

is redundant; the red clay titans

Carousels, finally possessing themselves, spun

are drained, asleep below ground.

like prayer wheels on their invisible fulcrums;

gardens fumed like Warsaw's smoldering ruins.

Their life has become an outcry.

The first van hadn't arrived yet

It pays you to keep your mouth shut

at the brown slaughterhouse wall.

when your best friend explains to you

that he let a man beat him senseless

because pain never lets you down.

(from The Edge of the Screen)

Tabula Rasa
by Joel Lane

Don't Go
by Joel Lane

The ants did their slow, deliberate work,

swarming over the head like points of ink,
obsessive as journalists, thorough as police.

You said, stone dies like us.

They knocked down that pub
off Deritend, close to the viaduct

First to go was the neatly severed neck,

then the bruised mouth, the torn eyelids,

that'll be the next thing to go.

I said, but stone doesn't live:

the vocal cords raw from screaming.

just sweats it day after day,
The ants poured like a river of years
to bleach the contamination of flesh away
from the hard, vacant skull of a fanatic.

holding on, but not feeling,

slowly growing a coat of ash
while the lime drips from its pores.
You said, that's not living?

(from The Autumn Myth)

(from Trouble in the Heartland)