And I said these are flower petals, Sleep petals, dream petals, Blown by the winds of a dream.
But still the crimson rockets rose.
They seemed to be One great field of immense poppies burning evenly, Casting their viscid perfume to the earth.
The earth is sown with dead, And out of these the red Blooms are pushing up, advancing higher, And each night brings them nigher, Closer, closer to my heart.
V
By the sluggish ca.n.a.l That winds between thin ugly dunes, There are no pa.s.sing boats with creaking ropes to-day.
But when the evening Crouches down, like a hurt rabbit, Under the everlasting raincloud whirling up the north horizon, Downwards on the stream will float Glowing points of fire.
Orange, coppery, scarlet, Crimson, rosy, flickering, They pa.s.s, the lanterns Of the unknown dead.
Out where the sea, sailless, Is mouthing and fretting Its chaos of pebbles and dried sticks by the dunes.
By the wall of that house That looks like a face half torn away, And from its flat mouth barks at the sky, The sky which is shot with broad red disks of light, Petals drowsily falling.
VI
"It was not for a sacred cause, Nor for faith, nor for new generations, That unburied we roll and float Beneath this flaming tumult of drunken sleep-flowers.
But it was for a mad adventure, Something we longed for, poisonous, seductive, That we dared go out in the night together, Towards the glow that called us, On the unsown fields of death.
"Now we lie here reaped, ungarnered, Red swaths of a new harvest: But you who follow after, Must struggle with our dream: And out of its restless and oppressive night, Filled with blue fumes, dull, choking, You will draw hints of that vision Which we hold aloof in silence."
THE END