LONDON 1941
HALF masonry, half pain ; her head
From which the plaster breaks away Like flesh from the rough bone, is turned Upon a neck of stones ; her eyes Are lidless windows of smashed glass, Each star-shaped pupil Giving upon a vault so vast How can the head contain it?
The raw smoke Is inter-wreathing through the jaggedness Of her sky-broken panes, and mirror'd Fires dance like madmen on the splinters.
All else is stillness save the dancing splinters And the slow inter-wreathing of the smoke.
Her breasts are crumbling brick where the black ivy Had clung like a fantastic child for succour And now hangs draggled with long peels of paper, Fire-crisp, fire-faded awnings of limp paper Repeating still their ghosted leaf and lily.
Grass for her cold skins' hair, the grass of cities Wilted and swaying on her plaster brow From winds that sweep along the streets of cities : Across a world of sudden fear and firelight She looms erect, the great stones at her throat, Her rusted ribs like railings round her heart ; A figure of dry wounds—of winter wounds- 0 mother of wounds ; half masonry, half pain.
MERVYN PEAKE.
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