“There is a hall in Bloomsbury
That no more dare I tread,
For all the stone men shout at me and swear they are not dead
And once I touched a broken girl, and knew that marble bled.”
James Elroy Flecker
James Elroy Flecker
In the blue terror of evening
Men came - shards of tile and mirror
Flaking in their stubbly hair
They linked the sun on a chain
And pulled
Guffawing at their Aten shuns
Gelding long and quiet ones
Gelding long and quiet ones
We lay down in a box and drove
Through darkness, a moth light
Frazzling the tall grass, a channel
To the kingdom of weeds
Outside the gates, a rabble wrenched
The horny membership
From their stone likeness
And crumbled into dust
Outside the gates, a rabble wrenched
The horny membership
From their stone likeness
And crumbled into dust
Allah à la jardin, the gardener
Redfaced man of allotments
His pruned bush; his pollard tree
Eyeing all
History from his drinking tin, said
'You may not barge in, out with you'
We shrugged, it is cold in the shadow
Of yet another reliquary
There is no god but all
We shrugged, it is cold in the shadow
Of yet another reliquary
There is no god but all
So we left the land for other suns
