5 MAY 1939, Page 13

POEM

IN this quiet room, at this quiet time In anxious Europe, things come casually To our sensation. The innocent light hangs Over the roadway, still the hedge fulfils Its civil job, the tree sounds slightly

Like the sea, and the accepted rain is slight.

Stand at the window. The cigarette Is warm, your clock ticks calmly.

This seems the quiet of our two neighbours, And the moral law, in which the normal Nights and weeks go by, things are themselves And seldom metaphors or noticed, and the symbols From the rain and blackness do not, As now, so actively engage us.

GEOFFREY GRIGSON.