{cento poem #33} april 11th 2021

 There will be soft rains and the smell of the ground

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound:

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white, 

Robins will wear feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence wire’

And not one will know of the war, not one will care

At the last, it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree 

If mankind perished utterly:

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone. 

In heaven, a spirit doth dwell

“Whose heart-strings are a lute” 

None sing so wildly well

As the angel Israel 

And the giddy stars as so legends tell

Ceasing their hymns attends the spell

Of his voice all mute 

Tottering above In her highest noon

The enamoured moon

Blushes with love

While listening, the red Levin

With the rapid Pleiads, even 

Which where seven

Pauses in heaven 

But the skies that angel trod, 

Where deep thoughts are a duty

Where loves a grown-up god

Where the Houri glances are

Imbued with all the beauty

Which worship in a star.

Therefore thou art not wrong

Israfel, who despised

An impassioned song

The ecstasies above

With thy burning measures suit

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love

With the fervour of thy lute

Well may the stars be mute

Yes, Heaven is fine: but this 

Tis a world of sweets and sours

Our flowers of merely-flowers,

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss

Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell, Where Israfel

Hath Dwelt, and he where I,

He might not sing so wildly well

While a bolder note than this might swell 

From my lie within the sky. 

I saw an angel once 

But she had lost her wings

Feathers that bent to broken

I saw an angel once

She seemed broken of all things

I saw an angel once 

And asked her why she was sad

The angel looked at me and said

“Because the world has gone mad”

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all

And sweetest in the gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little angel

That kept so many warm

I’ve heard it in the coldest land

And on the strangest sea

Yet, never in extremity 

It asked for a crumb of me