In The Square
0 son doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges
To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma on the platinum benches, With the somersaults and fireworks, the roast and the
smacking kisses—
Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
And Garbo's and Cleopatra's wits to go astraying, In a feather ocean with me to go fishing and playing
Still jolly when the cock has burst himself with crowing—
Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
And to stand on green turf among the craning yelling faces, Dependant on the chestnut, the sable, and Arabian horses, And me with a magic crystal to foresee their places— Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples. • This square to be a deck, and these pigeons sails to rig And to follow the delicious breeze like a tantony pig
To the shaded feverless islands where the.melons are big—
Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
And these shops to be turned to tulips in a garden bed, And me with my stick to thrash each merchant dead As he pokes from a flower his bald and wicked head- — Cried the six cripples to the silent statue, The six beggared cripples.
A hole in the bottom of heaven, and Peter and Paul And each smug surprised saint like parachutes to fall, And every one-legged beggar to have no legs at all— Cried the six cripples to the silent statue,
The six beggared cripples. W. H. AUDEN.
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