ancient night, They, the scoffers, the scornful of chains, Stride their turbulent flight.

 The stars spin steel above their heads In the shut irrevocable sky; Gnarled thorn-branches tear to shreds Their cloaks of pageantry.

A wind blows bitter in the grey, Chills the sweat on throbbing cheeks, And tugs the gaudy rags away From their lean bleeding knees.

Their laughter startles the scarlet dawn Among a tangled spiderwork Of girdered steel, and shrills forlorn And dies in the rasp of wheels.

Whirling like gay prints that whirl In tatters of squalid gaudiness, Borne with dung and dust in the swirl Of wind down the endless street, 

 With thin lips laughing bitterly, Through the day smeared in sooty smoke That pours from each red chimney, They speed unseemily.

Women with unlustered hair, Men with huge ugly hands of oil, Children, impudently stare And point derisive hands.

Only ... where a barrel organ thrills Two small peak-chested girls to dance, And among the iron clatter spills A swiftening rhythmy song,

 They march in velvet silkslashed hose, Strumming guitars and mellow lutes, Strutting pointed Spanish toes, A stately company.

VII TO THE MEMORY OF DEBUSSY Good Friday, 1918.

This is the feast of death We make of our pain God; We worship the nails and the rod and pain's last choking breath and the bleeding rack of the cross.

 The women have wept away their tears, with red eyes turned on death, and loss of friends and kindred, have left the biers flowerless, and bound their heads in their blank veils, and climbed the steep slope of Golgotha; fails at last the wail of their bereavement, and all the jagged world of rocks and desert places stands before their racked sightless faces, as any ice-sea silent.

This is the feast of conquering death. The beaten flesh worships the swishing rod. The lacerated body bows to its God, adores the last agonies of breath.

 And one more has joined 

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