Poetry

The Road to Ruin

(1) Mimic Warfare TROOPS on manoeuvres, mechanized and masked, Solve tactical conundrums for the Tanks— Plodding the Plain in patriotic pranks.

" What means this mimic warfare ? " I have asked, Halting my horse on a green ridge whose rings Remind mankind of unenlightened Kings.

My query's abstract . . . Genial tanks go grinding Along the tarmac. Joining in the fun, An armoured lorry hauls an aircraft gun. Meanwhile in summer sunlight no one's finding Cause to disparage these unconscious provers Of nations pledged to war's traditional crimes. No casualties occur in such manoeuvres (Blandly reported in to-morrow's Times).

(z) A Premonition

A gas-proof ghost, I climbed the stair To find how priceless paintings fare When corpses, chemically killed, Lie hunched and twisted in the stilled Disaster of Trafalgar Square.

To time's eternities I came ; And found the Virgin of the Rocks Dreaming with downward eyes the same Apocalypse of peace . . . The claim Of Art was disallowed. Past locks And walls crass war had groped, and gas Was tarnishing each gilded frame.

(3) The Ultimate Atrocity When the first man who wasn't quite an ape Felt magnanimity and prayed for more, The world's redemption stood, in human shape, With darkness done and betterment before. From then till now such men have multiplied ; From then till now their task has been the same, In whom the world's redemption dreamed and died— To whom the vision of perfection came.

I hear an aeroplane—what years ahead

Who knows I—but if from that machine should fall The first bacterial bomb, this world might find That all the aspirations of the dead Had been betrayed and blotted out,- and all Their deeds denied who hoped for Humankind.

(4) News from the War-after-Next

The self-appointed Representative Of Anti-Christ in Europe having been chosen As War Dictator, we are pledged to live With Violence, Greed, and Ignorance as those in Controllership of Life . . . The microphone Transmits the creed of Anti-Christ alone.

The last Idealist was lynched this morning By the Beelzebub's Cathedral congregation— A most impressive and appropriate warning To all who would debrutalize the Nation.

Our dago enemies having tried to kill us By every method hitherto perfected, We launch to-morrow our great new Bacillus, And an overwhelming victory is expected.

Thus, Moloch willing, we inaugurate A super-savage Mammonistic State.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON.