Certainly our city with its byres of poverty down to <br />The river's edge, its cathedral, its engines, its dogs; <br />Here is the cosmopolitan cooking <br />And the light alloys and the glass. <br /> <br />Built by the conscience-stricken, the weapon-making, <br />By us. Wild rumours woo and terrify the crowd, <br />Woo us. Betrayers thunder at, blackmail <br />Us. But where now are They. <br /> <br />Who without reproaches showed us what our vanity <br />has chosen, <br />Who pursued understanding with patience like a sex, <br />had unlearnt <br />Our hatred and towaards the really better <br />World had turned their face? <br /> <br />Who knows? The peaked and violent faces are exalted, <br />The feverish prejudiced lives do not care, and lost <br />Their voice in the flutter of bunting, the glittering <br />Brass of our great retreat, <br /> <br />And the malice of death. For the wicked card is dealt and <br />The sinister tall-hatted botanist stoops at the spring <br />With his insignificant phial and looses <br />The plague on the ignorant town. <br /> <br />Under their shadows the pitiful subalterns are sleeping; <br />The moon is usual; the necessary lovers touch; <br />The river is alone and the trampled flower; <br />And through years of absolute cold <br /> <br />The planets rush towards Lyra in a lion's charge. Can <br />Hate so securely bind? Are they dead here? Yes. <br />And the wish to wound has the power. And tomorrow <br />Comes. It's a world. It's a way.<br /><br />WH Auden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-we-like-it-2/
