The Adventure of the Apocalypse

Strange enemy

Coward who criest to lose a single soul,

Yellow heart lapped in the omnipotent sun,

Traitor who flingers' our loves to heavenly hands,

Fifth-columnist of fire, hooded in hush

To break a door of dreams through Matter's sleep

Or else to hide a time-bomb in our heart

For blowing up wife and child to eternity!

Torpedo to our lusts and luxuries,

Magnetic mine for shipwrecks of desire,

Diver with gold block-busters from the Inane,

Huge paratrooper out of primal Night,

Now have I caught Thy stratagem of the Unknown,

Broadcasting bliss from radios under earth,

Swooping, on the myriad cries that quiver and clash,

The supersonic doom of white V-l!

Sure shall Thy mystery burst through the Maginot Line

Of all things built secure by guardian thought,

Wall upon wall against the void of the Unseen.

Out of the timeless gap of the zero hour

Tanks thunder out truths, flame-throws of secrecies

Wound the smooth certitude-cemented forts.

Before, behind, below, above, around,

Ringing with raptures beyond birth and death—

Then, with a pincer-movement of Sun and Moon,

Plucking the blindness off the inmost Eye,

Comest Thou, sweet tiger and wolf, serpent and fox,

A lunge of lightning, a stab of sudden stars,

A crescent smile smiting from the Immense.

Take Thou my puny armours, drive in my breast

Thy hooved dictatorship of diamond and gold.

Make, as Thou wilt, of my small vacant life

Thy living space, Thy Space that lives and loves.

Warfare is futile, surrender sole defense:

Stript of the shades I stand, naked to Thy noon,

O Lord . .. O Lover .. . O Embrace of all the Blue!

14-5-48

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