Classic Poem

To-morrow I shall wake up tired and heavy-minded,
With a bitter mouth and bleared eyes.
Sluggishly, reluctantly, I shall pull myself from my bed.
I shall thrust on my shabby clothes and wash my face and hands;
Put on a collar and tie, a coat and waistcoat, all in haste,
Drink a cup of hot tea, eat a few mouthfuls of bread and butter;
Then, with a hurried kiss to wife and children,
Run down the stairs into the miserable street.
All I meet are shabby, all go one way,
Drawn on by the same magnet, urged by the same demon.
We are the respectable; and behind us, though we do not see him,
Driving us with his goad, is hunger — the first law of our land.
He emmeshes us, he regiments us, he drills us to obey his time.
For him we hurry through the dust or the mud, through the cold or heat,
To the slave-pens. For him we shove at each other at the tramcars,
Crowd elbow to elbow in the tubes, through which we are hurled,
Packed and swaying. For him we sell our soul's freedom,
Obey men we do not respect, do trivial things that mean nothing to us,
And only have meaning as part of the whole machine that we serve.
O, irony, irony, that we should be gaoler and gaoled
In a prison of our own making that we might destroy to-morrow!
It is not labour that kills, but the lack of faith in the labourer.

To-morrow I shall pass the best hours of my day
Pent up with people who do not speak the language I seek,
And who would not understand it if it were found.
I shall write on papers, according to rules,
Words that might fit my language if they were free;
But they are debased and chipped and worn and crushed,
And they answer words that are driven together by use,
And not joined by mastery, a slave language of counters.
I shall come home through the darkened streets,
Tired and brooding over the lost hours,
And loathing the weakness that led me to waste my strength
In argument that started from no point of worth,
And was borne on by no sustenance,
A mere frittering of words in known phrases,
A reaction against boredom and dulness,
And the killing of life hour by hour
On a chair before a table with dusty papers
And formulas invented to ensure uniformity,
The wonder being that so many find themselves so well of it all,
And see no wrong, and ask only for promotion.
How I hate myself in these moments,
Tear at my weakness with the claws of my mind,
And gasp out aloud in the streets the thoughts that rend me.
As I stalk along, overtaking all who are before me,
The darkness and drabness around me suiting my mood
And crushing me further still into myself;
And I become a black ferment of half-born thoughts
And still-born desires and unborn emotions,
Curdled with hates and ragings, and nigh to tears.
One word of love and understanding would turn my poison into wine:
But do you find love and understanding in the City?
Seventeen years have I passed there, and have not found them;
But you are luckier perhaps than I, who have always been
A stranger within the walls and between them,
Knowing the hatred of crowds, the sneers of passers,
The jeers and the laughter of the clipped and maimed and castrated.
Their poor, docked lives have held no beauty;
Their lamps have been choked,
And the guttering wick has stunk their souls out,
Whether they wear gold chains and good leather and cloth,
Or a greasy cap and torn shoddy.