bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-
ered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains
will cure them,
Then nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world’s thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the
mountain…
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The sky was cold December blue with great tumbling clouds,
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Guard yourself from the terrible empty light of space, the bottomless
Guard yourself from perceiving the inherent nastiness of man and woman.(Expose yourself to it: you might learn something.)Faith, as they now confess, is preposterous, an act of will. Choose the Christian sheep-coteOr the Communist rat-fight: faith will cover your head from the man-devouring stars.
I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch’s Life of Sulla
Were all suddenly struck quietAnd ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,So fierce and final, a brazenPealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.They marvelled; the soothsayers answered:‘Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at the end of each periodA sign…
Friendship, when a friend meant a helping sword,
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Man, introverted man, having crossed
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