Spring 1940

O season of repetition and return, 
Of light, and the primitive visions of light 
   Opened in little ponds disturbing
   The blind water that conducts excitement,

How lucid the image in your shining well 
Of a limpid day, how eloquent your streams 
   Of lives without language, the cell ma- 
   -noeuvres and the molecular bustle.

O hour of images when we sniff the herb 
Of childhood and forget who we are and dream 
   Like whistling boys of the vast spaces 
   Of the Inconsistent racing towards us

With all its appealing private detail. But 
Our ways are revealing; crossing the legs 
   Or resting the cheek in the hand, we
   Hide the mouths through which the Disregarded

Will always enter. For we know we're not boys 
And never will be: part of us all hates life, 
   And some are completely against it. 
   Spring leads the truculent sailors into

The park, and the plump little girls, but none 
Are determined like the tiny brains who found 
   The great communities of summer: 
   Only on battlefields, where the dying

With low voices and not very much to say 
Repair the antique silence the insects broke 
   In an architectural passion,
   Can night return to our cooling fibres.

O not even war can frighten us enough, 
That last attempt to eliminate the Strange 
   By uniting us all in a terror
   Of something known, even that's a failure.

Which cannot stop us taking our walks alone, 
Scared by the unknown unconditional dark, 
   Down the avenues of our longing:
   For however they dream they are scattered,

Our bones cannot help reassembling themselves 
Into the philosophic city where dwells 
   The knowledge they cannot get out of; 
   And neither a Spring nor a war can ever

So condition his ears as to keep the song 
That is not a sorrow from the Double Man. 
   O what weeps is the love that hears, an 
   Accident occurring in his substance.