Shapes of death haunt life, <br />Neurosis eclipsing each in special shadow: <br />Unrequited love not solving <br />One’s need to become another’s body <br />Wears black invisibility: <br />The greed for property <br />Heaps a skyscraper over the breathing ribs: <br />The speedlines of dictators <br />Cut their own stalks: <br />From afar, we watch the best of us – <br />Whose adored desire was to die for the world. <br /> <br />Ambition is my death. That flat thin flame <br />I feed, that plants my shadow. This prevents love <br />And offers love of being loved or loving. <br />The humorous self-forgetful drunkenness <br />It hates, demands the slavish pyramids <br />Be built. Who can prevent <br />His death’s industry, which when he sleeps <br />Throws up its towers? And conceals in slackness <br />The dreams of revolution, the birth of death? <br /> <br />Also the swallows by autumnal instinct <br />Comfort us with their effortless exhaustion <br />In great unguided flight to their complete South. <br />There on my fancied pyramids they lodge <br />But for delight, their whole compulsion. <br />Not teaching me to love, but soothing my eyes; <br />Not saving me from death, but saving me for speech.<br /><br />Stephen Spender<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-shapes-of-death/
