More beautiful and soft than any moth <br />With burring furred antennae feeling its huge path <br />Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off engines <br />Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall <br />To point the wind. Gently, broadly, she falls, <br />Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air. <br /> <br />Lulled by descent, the travellers across sea <br />And across feminine land indulging its easy limbs <br />In miles of softness, now let their eyes trained by watching <br />Penetrate through dusk the outskirts of this town <br />Here where industry shows a fraying edge. <br />Here they may see what is being done. <br /> <br />Beyond the winking masthead light <br />And the landing-ground, they observe the outposts <br />Of work: chimneys like lank black fingers <br />Or figures frightening and mad: and squat buildings <br />With their strange air behind trees, like women's faces <br />Shattered by grief. Here where few houses <br />Moan with faint light behind their blinds, <br />They remark the unhomely sense of complaint, like a dog <br />Shut out and shivering at the foreign moon. <br /> <br />In the last sweep of love, they pass over fields <br />Behind the aerodrome, where boys play all day <br />Hacking dead grass: whose cries, like wild birds <br />Settle upon the nearest roofs <br /> <br />But soon are hid under the loud city. <br />Then, as they land, they hear the tolling bell <br />Reaching across the landscape of hysteria, <br /> <br />To where larger than all the charcoaled batteries <br />And imaged towers against that dying sky, <br />Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.<br /><br />Stephen Spender<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-landscape-near-an-aerodrome/
