Classic Poem

XIX

To-day we have remembered sacrifice and glory
And the Cenotaph with flowers is overstocked:
A single gun to soundlessness has clocked
And unified King, Communist, and Tory. . . .
I have listened to your broken stumbling story,
And trespassed in your mind, slum-built and shoddy.
You too have shared the Silence; you have knelt
In the cheerless Prison chapel; you have felt
Armistice Day emotion brim your body.

Six years, you say, you've worked at baking bread
(A none-too-wholesome task that must be done
By those whom God appoints). You are twenty-one
(Though I'd have guessed you less). Your father's dead
(Run over by a lorry, I think you said,
In the Great War, while coming home on leave)
Your brother got in trouble and spent three years
In Borstal (all these facts I can believe
Without the reinforcement of your tears).

Your brother failed completely to " make good";
Your brother died; committed suicide
By turning on the gas, a twelve-month since.
Now you're in prison for stealing what you could:
Mother's in prison for the same offence:
And I've no reason to suspect you lied
When you informed me that you " only tried
To stick to mother." I was touched. You stood
So young, so friendless, so remorseful-eyed.

Therefore I find myself compelled to add
A footnote on your candour and humility
You seem to me a not insensitive lad
Of average emotional ability.
You've " been upset to-day." " By what?" I query.
" By the two-minute silence." Then your weeping . . .
And then your face, so woebegone and weary.
And now — what use, the pity that I am heaping
Upon your head? What use — to wish you well
And slam the door? Who knows? . . . My heart, not yours, can tell.