Time flies. It
is interesting to note that the preoccupations which now dominate much public
debate were already taking wing in 1980 when this poem was written, e.g.
environmentalism, minority ‘rights’ and new age spirituality. A few notes: 5th
stanza – the USSR and the Cold War still existed; Jimmy Carter was US
President; despite the ideological divide the US was selling large quantities
of grain to the Russians. 6th stanza – it was regarded as a cultural
triumph that The Who had been booked to play in Dallas, Texas – God help us. 7th
stanza – “Christopher Street” was a term for the homosexual lobby. 10th
stanza – “Giroux” is Robert Giroux, Chairman of Farrar, Straus & Giroux who
spent a lifetime discovering and publishing a huge list of significant writers.
------------
What
is the use of books in bed,
The
half-read and the to-be-read
With no-one at your side?
The
clock becomes a mass of ticks,
The
blankets do not yield to kicks
And vanish like a tide.
England
meanders into night –
A
room gone quiet after light –
This dull autumnal day;
The
U.S. with the poet’s wife
Beneath
horizons bursts with life,
And makes demotic hay.
In
California golden men
With
names like Brewster and like Ben
Are riding on the surf;
The
sun-soaked cities eat the coast
Like
young PR’s devouring toast
Out on the morning turf.
In
Oregon, that lovely state,
Committed
young make drivers wait
Until they’ve checked the gasses
That
spluttering from a cracked exhaust
Might
visit minor holocaust
Upon the natural masses.
In
mid-West states the farmers bring
Their
combines to the harvesting –
The glowing plains are shorn;
They
loathe the Russians, all they do,
Think
Carter should rough up a few,
But want them to eat corn.
In
the New South of dust and plain
A
cowboy flies an aeroplane
And drinks at Caesar’s Palace;
A
businessman concludes a deal
To
civilize the commonweal
And bring The Who to Dallas.
In
Washington and in New York
Discrimination’s
all the talk
Against the blacks and women;
And
Puerto Ricans, Mexicans,
Christopher
Street and Indians,
And anyone not winning.
Off
Union Square a church is full –
A
group debate the pentacle
And study the “I Ching”;
Next
week it’s “You and Worry Beads”.
Outside,
a faded notice reads
“The Church of Christ the King.”
On
campuses a few old men
With
shaky lips remember when
They lectured on the Good;
Their
students sat in quiet rows
Developing
a canny nose
For what was gold or wood.
But
Giroux in his office grooms
The
products of cheap, rented rooms
Refusing to allow
That
Art and Culture should become
As
hollow as a beaten drum
Or bellow like a cow.
In
England now the pundits write
As
if they ever had been right
And try to scan the times;
Boring
as men in urinals
They
only know that criminals
Incline to commit crimes.
Our
intellectuals drink their juice
As
subtle-arrogant as Zeus
And open the New Statesman;
From
front to back it’s full of “it’s”
And
other non-elitist bits,
As surly as a placeman.
The
poets rise soon after noon
And
spread their butter with a spoon
Singing a small “introit”;
If
Pope or Chaucer stood before them
And
spoke of wit or of decorum
I fear they would not know it.
The
people who produced the ballad
Now
struggle for a crazy salad
And know not want they do;
The
streets are like a vale of sighs,
Their
windows are accusing eyes
Demanding “Who are you?”
As
sullen as an offshore rock
That’s
grazed by a forgotten flock
And cut off by the tide,
England
sings ditties to the sky,
Scratches
its cheek, is jostled by
The flotsam at its side.
The
storm clouds of this latter world
Are
spreading fast like flags unfurled,
The Furies search for blood;
We
play our corner of the game,
Giving
our number and our name,
And watch the rising flood.
Think
of the starving and the fraught
Whose
lives are no more than a thought
As officers prepare
To
move their armies to the front
Where
villages will bear the brunt
As if they were not there.
Come
back my love on the last ’plane
And
we shall bill and kiss again
Before the thunder starts;
For
soon a sword will draw a line,
The
generals will give the sign,
And frenzy grip our hearts.
====================
© January 1980
