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Edward Thomas
What will they do when I am gone? It is plain
That they will do without me as the rain
Can do without the flowers and the grass
That profit by it and must perish without.
I have but seen them in the loud street pass;
And I was naught to them. I turned about
To see them disappearing carelessly.
But what if I in them as they in me
Nourished what has great value and no price?
Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draught
Which only in the blossom's chalice lies,
Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.
The stars are like gold-fish in a deep blue bowl,
Swimming round and round the centuries.
Sometimes one dies of the hot summer night;
I watch it falling —
Fading —
And I watch the others,
Floating in their blue bowl,
Eternally golden,
Immortally indifferent.
Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly then
Styled but the shadows of us men?
At morn and even shades are longest,
At noon they are or short or none;
So men at weakest, they are strongest,
But grant us perfect, they're not known.
Say, are not women truly then
Styled but the shadows of us men?
Please watch your step.
You may be stepping on lives.
That is, if you consider
An ant, a frog, a cockroach or me
Lives worth your consideration.
These flowers? Ah, never mind,
They were my offerings to you.
If this silence lengthens
To weeks, months – why, even years
You might not learn it when I die.
If we are never to meet again,
You will never see the lines
That ravage my face.
If we are never to talk again
You will never know
That you were there
Always in my thoughts.
You shrug, says ‘so what?’
‘What if you died –
Everyone does, don’t they?
What if you got old –
Everyone does, don’t they?
What if
hi, i want to die.
well, okay.
LOVE YOURSELF MORE & SPREAD LOVE & LOVE & LOVE.
Biafra. Biafra. Biafra.
Small stock of compassion grown in us
(when we would let it by photos of napalmed children
gives out: expended saying
Viet Nam, Viet Nam: trying
to act to end
that war.
Now sluggishly
we turn pages: photos
of children dying in Biafra. Dull
accumulation of overdue statistics: Massacre
of the Ibos. It happened already Now
more of the same. The poisoning
called 'getting used to' has taken place:
we are
the deads: nerve-endings
If I break my hand
Will anyone care
If I hang myself
Will anyone care
I know they wont they dont give a fuck what I do
Say
Or how I act
I say fuck you
They say right back
I wanna punch the shit out of something but I dont
This stream
in winter cannot
be crossed —
or only if you
care not where
you come ashore.
Who appeared
least concerned
longest stayed.
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho' you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.