Aunt Sally Speaks

Who have been educated out of naive responses, The hoodoo of love, the cinderella of class Knowing that everywhere man has the same clock face, the same moody defences Against age and the loss of love in the hope of millenniums Who think too much perhaps of elegance Or the form of wisdom, having outgrown dreams Like baby clothes a long while since; Wiseacres playing with terrible dolls in the twilight holding our sides, thinking of mad Loyola Or that bald maker of roads, the much stabbed Caesar Till the stars are bright; Who cannot live in the Very Lights of the headlines Or forget the unrehearsed summer of the shires Because Europe is frightened, quakes like a woman, Looks wildly behind? How shall we live except as plants or fays Who cannot take ten deep breaths in any crowd? Neither the whimsical mob, nor those whose better times Are only a pierrots disguise For the disastrous pathos of their present? What shall we do who cannot place a candle Before the ikon of the future, nor yet acquiesce Unconsciously in habit? For whom the actor's gesture, the preacher's word Are not enough being at all times too conscious Of the shortcomings of motive, who refuse drugs And the tailspin of madness? What shall we do with our hardened arteries Under the zeppelin shade of catastrophe but emulate the gloss and selfishness of china Till the clocks fly away?