Greening - To the war poets

It makes the downtown bustle freeze. Go quiet. Glance round. No one sees. In side-streets, something grasps an arm. A question.

Answerless. Stay calm. Far off, the bells are trembling thin And stubble stirs on each sharp chin. Hes started. There, up on the fells Hes dancing, shouting: Men! To kill! And when he shakes his dark head, chains Of skulls go rattling round his brain. A moving tower, he tramples out The last of light.

The river clots As countless bodies staunch and dam Its reedy flow. The white birds swarm. He steeplechases through the night This red wild-shrieking hound, and out Of darkness spring nights secret shows, Footlit as if by lava flows. The fields are scattered with the pointed Caps of a thousand flames; the hunted Refugees below are thrust Into the forest fires to roast. From tree to tree, like yellow bats The flames spread as inferno eats Each forest. Rattling at the bars, The stoker prods it till it roars.

A city sank into the reeking Yellow, hurled itself, unspeaking. But he stands vast above the glow And shakes his torch three times to show The storm-zagged clouds, the frigid wastes Of darkness, he has seared this place To ash; then brings to his dry lips His brimstone spit: apocalypse.