Suburbs On A Hazy Day

O STIFFLY shapen houses that change not, What conjuror's cloth was thrown across you, and raised To show you thus transfigured, changed, Your stuff all gone, your menace almost rased?

Such resolute shapes, so harshly set In hollow blocks and cubes deformed, and heaped In void and null profusion, how is this? In what strong aqua regia now are you steeped?

That you lose the brick-stuff out of you And hover like a presentment, fading faint And vanquished, evaporate away To leave but only the merest possible taint!

HYDE PARK AT NIGHT, BEFORE THE WAR

Clerks.

WE have shut the doors behind us, and the velvet flowers of night Lean about us scattering their pollen grains of golden light.

Now at last we lift our faces, and our faces come aflower To the night that takes us willing, liberates us to the hour.

Now at last the ink and dudgeon passes from our fervent eyes And out of the chambered weariness wanders a spirit abroad on its enterprise.

Not too near and not too far Out of the stress of the crowd Music screams as elephants scream When they lift their trunks and scream aloud For joy of the night when masters are Asleep and adream.

So here I hide in the Shalimar With a wanton princess slender and proud, And we swoon with kisses, swoon till we seem Two streaming peacocks gone in a cloud Of golden dust, with star after star On our stream.