We have heard no nightingales singingin cool, dim lane, where eveningcomes like a procession through the aisles at passion-tide,filling the church with quiet prayer dressed in white.We have known no hills where sea-winds sweep up the thyme perfume,and crush it against our nostrils, as we stand by hump-backed trees.
We have felt no willow leaves pluck us timidlyas we pass on slack rivers;a kiss, and a stealing away, like a lover who dares no more.For we are the walkers on pavement,who go grey-faced and given-up through the rain;with our twice turned collars crinkled,and the patches bunched coarsely in our crotches.They have gashed the lands with cities,and gone away afraid when the wounds turned blue.Beauty has crept into the shelves of squat buildings,to stare out strangely at us from the pages of Keats,and the wan and wishful Georgian leaves.These are our birthright, smoke and angry steel,and long stern rows of stone, and wheels.We are left with the churches, the red-necked men who eat oysters,and stand up to talk at us in the approved manner.We are left with the politicians who think poorly of us,and who stand back with chaos in their pale old eyeswhimpering, ."That is not what we wanted. No,it was not to have gone that way.."They are very old, but we have been very ill,and cannot yet send them away.
But there are things that still matter, something yet within us:nights of love, bread and the kids,and the cheek of the woman next door,thoughts that glitter sometimes like a ruby on a mud-flat,dreams that stir, and remind us of our blood.Though the cities straddle the land like giants, holding us, away,we know they will topple some day,and will lie over the land, dissolving and giving off gases.But a wind will spring up to carry the smells awayand the earth will suck off the liquids and the crumbling flesh,and on the bleached bones, when the sun shines,we shall begin to build.
