Hats
The hollow sound of your hard felt hat
As you clap it on your head
Is echoed over two thousand miles of trenches
By a thousand thousand guns;
And thousands of thousands of men have been killed,
And still more thousands of thousands have bled
And been maimed and have drowned
Because of that sound.
Towns battered and shattered,
Villages blasted to dust and mud,
Forests and woods stripped bare,
Rivers and streams befouled,
The earth between and beyond the lines
Ravaged and sown with steel
And churned with blood
And astink with decaying men,
Nations starving, women and children murdered,
Genius destroyed, minds deformed and twisted,
And waste, waste, waste
Of the earth's fruits, of the earth's riches, —
All in obedience to your voice;
And the sound of your hat
Is in the same gamut of void and thoughtless
And evil sounds.
O estimable man,
Keeper of the season ticket,
Walker on the pavement,
Follower of the leader writer,
Guardian of the life policy,
Insured against all harm —
Fire, burglary, servants' accidents —
Warden and ward of the church,
Wallflower of the suburbs,
Primrose of respectability,
As you go home beneath your hard felt hat
The tradesmen do you homage.
Happily, the trees do not know you.
You have scoffed at the poet,
Because you are a practical man:
And does not your house bear you out?
Have poets such houses?
It has a garden in front with a plot of grass,
And in the middle of that a flower-bed.
With a rose-tree in its midst, and other rose-trees
Against the walls, and a privet hedge,
And stocks and delphiniums, flowers in season!
The path is irregularly paved for quaintness;
There is a rustic porch, and a street door
With a polished brass letter-box and knocker,
And stained glass panels, showing a bird and flowers,
And an electric-bell push.
But you have a key, and you let yourself in
To the quiet red-tiled hall, where the doormat
Says " Welcome, " and the stand receives your umbrella
And your coat and your hard felt hat.
A drawing-room, a dining-room (because
All your fellows have them), and a kitchen
All clean and neat; and because the kitchen is comfortable
You have your tea there with your wife and child —
Only one child, for are you not practical?
On the upper floor are a bathroom and three bedrooms.
Let your furniture stand undisturbed,
I will not describe it: a hundred shops in London
Show off the like in their windows. As for your books,
They are as haphazard and as futile as your pictures.
But here is your comfort and you are comfortable;
And on summer evenings and Saturday afternoons
You wander out into the garden at the back,
Which is fenced off on three sides from similar gardens,
And you potter around with garden tools and are happy.
O insured against all harm,
Waiter on the pension at sixty,
Domestic vegetable, cultivated flower,
You have laughed at the poet, the unpractical dreamer:
You have seen life as book-keeping and accountancy;
Your arithmetic has pleased you, your compound interest,
Your business, more than the earth and the heavens;
And if your brother suffered, you took no heed,
Or read a liberal newspaper, and salved your conscience.
Ant, ant, oblivious of the water being boiled in the cauldron!
But when the time came for your chastisement,
For the punishment of your apathy, your will-less ignorance,
When the atmospheric pressure was just equivalent
To the weight of the seventy-six centimetre column of mercury,
And the water had exactly reached the hundredth degree of centigrade,
You felt, though you feared it, that the time had come,
That you had something called a collective honour, some patriotism;
And those others too felt the same honourable sentiment,
And you called for the slaughter that sanctifies honour,
And the boiling water was poured on us all. Ants! Ants!
Friend and brother, you have not been killed;
Chance still allows you to wear your bowler hat,
The helmet of the warrior in its degeneracy,
The symbol of gracelessness and of the hate of beauty,
The signature of your sameness and innocuousness.
Take off your hat; let your hair grow; open your eyes;
Look at your neighbour; his suffering is your hurt.
Become dangerous; let the metaphysical beast
Whose breath poisons us all fear your understanding,
And recoil from our bodies, his prey, and fall back before you,
And shiver and quake and thirst and starve and die.
As you clap it on your head
Is echoed over two thousand miles of trenches
By a thousand thousand guns;
And thousands of thousands of men have been killed,
And still more thousands of thousands have bled
And been maimed and have drowned
Because of that sound.
Towns battered and shattered,
Villages blasted to dust and mud,
Forests and woods stripped bare,
Rivers and streams befouled,
The earth between and beyond the lines
Ravaged and sown with steel
And churned with blood
And astink with decaying men,
Nations starving, women and children murdered,
Genius destroyed, minds deformed and twisted,
And waste, waste, waste
Of the earth's fruits, of the earth's riches, —
All in obedience to your voice;
And the sound of your hat
Is in the same gamut of void and thoughtless
And evil sounds.
O estimable man,
Keeper of the season ticket,
Walker on the pavement,
Follower of the leader writer,
Guardian of the life policy,
Insured against all harm —
Fire, burglary, servants' accidents —
Warden and ward of the church,
Wallflower of the suburbs,
Primrose of respectability,
As you go home beneath your hard felt hat
The tradesmen do you homage.
Happily, the trees do not know you.
You have scoffed at the poet,
Because you are a practical man:
And does not your house bear you out?
Have poets such houses?
It has a garden in front with a plot of grass,
And in the middle of that a flower-bed.
With a rose-tree in its midst, and other rose-trees
Against the walls, and a privet hedge,
And stocks and delphiniums, flowers in season!
The path is irregularly paved for quaintness;
There is a rustic porch, and a street door
With a polished brass letter-box and knocker,
And stained glass panels, showing a bird and flowers,
And an electric-bell push.
But you have a key, and you let yourself in
To the quiet red-tiled hall, where the doormat
Says " Welcome, " and the stand receives your umbrella
And your coat and your hard felt hat.
A drawing-room, a dining-room (because
All your fellows have them), and a kitchen
All clean and neat; and because the kitchen is comfortable
You have your tea there with your wife and child —
Only one child, for are you not practical?
On the upper floor are a bathroom and three bedrooms.
Let your furniture stand undisturbed,
I will not describe it: a hundred shops in London
Show off the like in their windows. As for your books,
They are as haphazard and as futile as your pictures.
But here is your comfort and you are comfortable;
And on summer evenings and Saturday afternoons
You wander out into the garden at the back,
Which is fenced off on three sides from similar gardens,
And you potter around with garden tools and are happy.
O insured against all harm,
Waiter on the pension at sixty,
Domestic vegetable, cultivated flower,
You have laughed at the poet, the unpractical dreamer:
You have seen life as book-keeping and accountancy;
Your arithmetic has pleased you, your compound interest,
Your business, more than the earth and the heavens;
And if your brother suffered, you took no heed,
Or read a liberal newspaper, and salved your conscience.
Ant, ant, oblivious of the water being boiled in the cauldron!
But when the time came for your chastisement,
For the punishment of your apathy, your will-less ignorance,
When the atmospheric pressure was just equivalent
To the weight of the seventy-six centimetre column of mercury,
And the water had exactly reached the hundredth degree of centigrade,
You felt, though you feared it, that the time had come,
That you had something called a collective honour, some patriotism;
And those others too felt the same honourable sentiment,
And you called for the slaughter that sanctifies honour,
And the boiling water was poured on us all. Ants! Ants!
Friend and brother, you have not been killed;
Chance still allows you to wear your bowler hat,
The helmet of the warrior in its degeneracy,
The symbol of gracelessness and of the hate of beauty,
The signature of your sameness and innocuousness.
Take off your hat; let your hair grow; open your eyes;
Look at your neighbour; his suffering is your hurt.
Become dangerous; let the metaphysical beast
Whose breath poisons us all fear your understanding,
And recoil from our bodies, his prey, and fall back before you,
And shiver and quake and thirst and starve and die.
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