约翰•贝杰曼诗3首
Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
Steam's escaping here and there,
Morning trains through Camden cutting
Shake the Crescent and the Square.
Early nip of changeful autumn,
Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,
At the back precarious bathrooms
Jutting out from upper floors;
And behind their frail partitions
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.
Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Come ,friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Mess up the mess they call a town-
And once a week a half a crown
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
It's not their fault they do not know
It's not their fault they often go
And talk of sport and makes of cars
And daren't look up and see the stars
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
Archibald
The bear that sits above my bed
A doleful bear he is to see;
From out his drooping pear-shaped head
His woollen eyes look into me.
He has no mouth, but seems to say:
'They'll burn you on the Judgement Day.'
Those woollen eyes, the things they've seen
Those flannel ears, the things they've heard -
Among horse-chestnut fans of green,
The fluting of an April bird,
And quarrelling downstairs until
Doors slammed at Thirty One West Hill.
The dreaded evening keyhole scratch
Announcing some return below
The nursery landing's lifted latch,
The punishment to undergo
Still I could smooth those half-moon ears
And wet that forehead with my tears.
Whatever rush to catch a train,
Whatever joy there was to share
Of sounding sea-board, rainbowed rain,
Or seaweed-scented Cornish air,
Sharing the laughs, you still were there,
You ugly, unrepentant bear.
When nine, I hid you in a loft
And dared not let you share my bed;
More aged now he is to see,
His woollen eyes have thinner thread,
But still he seems to say to me,
In double-doom notes, like a knell:
'You're half a century nearer Hell.'
Self-pity shrouds me in a mist,
And drowns me in my self-esteem.
The freckled faces I have kissed
Float by me in a guilty dream.
The only constant, sitting there,
Patient and hairless, is a bear.
And if an analyst one day
Of school of Adler, Jung or Freud
Should take this aged bear away,
Then, oh my God, the dreadful void!
its draughty darkness could but be
Eternity, Eternity.
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