* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook * This ebook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the ebook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check gutenberg.ca/links/licence.html before proceeding. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: God Save the King Author: Howard, Brian [Brian Christian de Claiborne] (1905-1958) Date of first publication: 1931 Edition used as base for this ebook: Paris: Hours Press, 1931 (first edition) Date first posted: 11 September 2009 Date last updated: 11 September 2009 Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #382 This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones & the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net _GOD SAVE THE KING And Other Poems by Brian Howard_ 150 COPIES OF THIS BOOK SET BY HAND AND PRIVATELY PRINTED ON HAND-PRESS EACH COPY HAS BEEN SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR This is No [Illustration: Signature--Brian Howard] GOD SAVE THE KING BRIAN HOWARD HOURS PRESS [Illustration: 15, _Rue Guénégaud_, 15] PARIS 6^e _To My Mother_ CONTENTS _Young God Save The King A Small Crucifixion Homage to Tennyson Father and Son She The Listening Child The Secret Self Branch I Remember I Remember Saying Good-bye to a Phoenix Love Letter Entends la douce nuit qui marche Always The figure Up_ J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future vigueur? Rimbaud. Young Loops of red gauze, the music swoops down the glass passage in the wall. Black, rolling hats on a gold rack: "The moon is fallen? Not at all. Lightning's only marble. Frightening? Only the moon's white marble hair." "Stammering thunder's wicked hammer!" "Night's pasodoble in the air. Tell me about it." "I'm in hell, I've lost my love, and my religion." "So has your friend, but then, you know the Holy Ghost's a carrier pigeon. He'll fly to you, he flew to me, flew back again, Faith in his beak. He also brought my love to tea. We laughed until we couldn't speak." "Bring more chartreuse! You've everything, I've nothing, and I hate the storm. Fate bids me go." "It isn't late. Goya's musicians still perform. Pains of your youth, and Spanish rains don't last, and hearts heal in the South." "I am betrayed. So stop this lie! These fountains merely herald drouth. Dry death will follow quick, and I will burn, my tears will turn to steam. I'll burst in bitter fire . . . you sigh? Thin sighing, like a vulture's scream!" "Please write your book, and do not tease your pleasant present with your past. But now, enough. They're going to shut." The ruby tango dies at last. Loud, flying flowers, odours proud, die in the mirrors as they go. Don Quintin's children have gone on. Don Quintin el Amargao. Madrid. 1925. God Save The King I The conversation of a bell striking across the afternoon this is what we remember of our early youth. A torch in the bedclothes is soon put out by a morning that comes before its time closing the book before the end of the page. Charon rings his doorbell all day long, it seems. The ceaseless anger of a bell running across a foggy teatime this is what we remember of our early youth. Amo. Amas. Amat. Does he really? How wonderful. A kiss translated from the Greek we received it in the bootroom, and we prayed prayed until our heads were cold with a pure sweat a simple dew, and ignorant. Not knowing the tomb when it touched us, not seeing the small, immediate burial of a child taking this first warning as a gift, which was only the last tap of an old woodpecker. Across the harsh field the bell comes like a stone killing him who was telling us our first story. He, the lustful elder, the dead woodpecker, is silent, so distressed to be left alone again by youth, to be so abandoned perched on the fence alone, in a pair of gold spectacles with a few red feathers round a broken beak. In an aseptic chapel, singing for Sunday supper our voices fail at the high note, the most holy. In the chapel sits the false eagle, the convert armoured in Christian brass, sprawling in a lean nest of Easter lilies. Here, the only eagle is brass and the saints have long since expelled the serpent leaving the lilies, virgins in a vase, open in death flowers of white soap, washed well, like the dead starched, like the white cowls of the dead, waxed, smelling of an immortal Sunday. The last word of the daily bell is said over a cup of cocoa in the dark. Ice, coming by night, closes the ewer with a click. The frosted sponge stiffens against a premature cockcrow. The cock waits patiently until we're all asleep and then, before there's been a minute's quiet in which to wake and weep and go to sleep again, he springs in one leap straight from the farmyard to the top of the steeple rattles the cross with his claws, stretches back his head, and screams to all the people screaming and screaming that dawn is late that the night is done which is not yet begun lying, while his crown shakes on his head, his crown of red lead telling the lie, screaming a false dawn and an unwanted resurrection to the scarcely dead. We rise, blind with something that resembled sleep, a brief prostration blind with torch, dream, or book, a few minutes of these. A little horizontal straining, a burden born upon the back. Rise, and shudder forward to split the ice, pour a libation crush the sponge, and scrub the teeth, in between a sneeze. A little vertical straining, quotidian harness, assumption of an upright rack. We rise, blind. Between the first walls of the day my friend, it is so difficult to wait for youth so hard to become young. To be young only in years is to be old and mad to wear a false beard, to be a small green peach bearded with snow its back against the wall, in a February without an end. We, being too young, are old, and wait at the bottom of a winter garden, for the sun and, when the sun comes, we find no strength to grow being green peaches, small and cold but only the exchange of light for darkness of nothing for nothing only the illumination of a familiar disaster unseen at night, but long learned by heart. To hide tears in other tears for no reason, save that early youth is madness to hide laughter in counterfeit laughter this is what we know of our early youth. II To smell autumn is to be seventeen. C'est un amateur il est toujours l'élève. I fall with each wicked leaf seventeen. Ego is triumphant in this lowest time ego in the evening season the evening that is too sweet, too rich. To-day there is only a banjo in tears to-day it is yesterday. To-morrow, spring will come, a small unicorn bringing a birthday but I cannot be born again I cannot give birth to myself again. Instead, I, an inferior Werther, have permitted the world to bear me a bastard an old alien baby, and dead. The narrow hips of my soul shall engender me nothing. I am a silly Hamlet. Even now I should be naked, leaning against the light holding myself, a newborn baby, in my arms. I should be standing in daylight, with the serpent and the eagle sitting in consort upon a burning bush, my head. Instead, my bones are a basket of silly sorrows. III Under the sailing cedar tree, in a heavy August the elders sat on the lawn, eating a little tea. The sun was in the silver, and the blue cuckoo, the bird Ophelia spoke her pure word, down in the field spoke and spoke again, words of virginal madness. Mother dwindled towards the vegetables and grew back to us again, leaning through the afternoon a daisy on a tide a bottle of milk in a green afternoon. But, as dirt gets between the teeth, and sweat creeps between the piano keys worms into everyone, nails into a cross so Mars, the loud newspaper boy, rode across our roses and trampled our teacups into the lawn. No storm scene destroyed our pastoral symphony, no grand tempest, but instead as dirt gets into the teeth, the newspaper got in at the garden gate and we were all filled with hate. It wasn't for want of washing, of waiting and watching ... ah, no we were always awfully careful, even at Oddenino. Black dirt, white dirt, all on a printed page, we didn't be_lieve_ you because of Cambridge, Cornwall, vows in a punt because we were being _young_ so _beau_tifully. Mother returned from the vegetables, on the run through the ruins of the minute sat on a garden chair, and thrust her roots down among the daisies in search of an older strength. Father cursed, and Ophelia fell from the bough snapping a Flanders poppy where she fell. Father's age, too old, made itself into a monument beside Mother an evening monument, and the eyelids were a little weary. We went. We left by the last summer train, never again. The Thames trembled in its bed, and Big Ben boomed the Abbey crouched like a beast, growling "All my boys are doomed!" Straw hats, as hot as butterflies, like butterflies rose on the roar that met the long, grey princes at the Brandenburger Tor. "Splendid, splendid" cried Burlington Bertie all the knuts were so excited "It doesn't matter now, having empty pockets" too excited to think of the empty eye-sockets. Father and Mother stood at home, in the mortal sunrise that shook on the horizon and refused to move. They stood, dumb gardeners in a forsaken greenhouse England, my green house, England, my green thought in my green shade, yellow sand, emerald isle, silver sea, hearts of oak white walls, rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, never waives the rules, but the thunder's got into the milk, my darling, and the short-horn's got T. B. and what, we soon began to say, is going to become of me? IV Explosion. There is no air. Only a blue vacuum, the hollow flame of a blow-lamp a blue, droning flame. An open mouth a blue, toothless mouth, kissing the young face, and droning. There is no air, but again and again explosion, in an exhausted sunshine. There is a little air, now. It comes with the rain. Souls, dropped under dust, stir gently, and soon float between their owners' feet pieces of bread in a stopped drain. My brother has lain down to rest a moment to blow a tired, red bubble in the mud. I have lived. I am now dead before I am dead. Where is my eagle, who was to perch, at last, on my shoulder? Where is my serpent, the eagle's lover who was to coil about the eagle, and guide his beak? I came here that I should not sleep before evening that I should awake once, in the holy strength of the eagle and that I should awake a second time, in the holy wisdom of the serpent and now I am dead before I am dead. Nore. 1928. A Small Crucifixion So many faces and so many nails faces in a huge, winter window, nails in a nice little box. The young man's being crucified. Such a cheerful cross, all painted with wild flowers by a Lady the colours go so well with the blood flat ferns of blood, thin and hard as wax. Spider shapes of blood, crawling behind each hand, and behind the locked feet. What did he do to you, Lady? He would not love. What shall we do to him, Lady? Crucify him. Crucify him. Vast winter faces fill the palace places. White, whistling March puts pretty sparks of jumping light on each nail's head. The army and the king sit in a rich ring hermaphrodites, hostesses, and pious ghosts watching him jerk, and jerk. He's not yet dead. Seated upon genuine antiques, we've a good view. The motor cars come curving up like a lot of cats while the young man struggles on his tree. Silly struggles. Snuggle close to me. Lady! now mark my words, seriously God made the world that this should be. Lady, come rest on the red cushion of my heart and watch the small spider microphone hang in his face, spinning a world's web to catch a public of flies. Each little cough shall be heard by millions. With blood in his voice, balanced upon infinity he made his bed, he made his choice, nails are now his trinity. Nore. 1929. Homage to Tennyson "Between the shadows of the vine bunches Floated the glowing sunlights as she moved." But all my sins return. Alone I pace the graveyard of myselves. Oh for an old, night wood! I would lie down upon a bank, and watch the stars bathe in the slowly folding stream a little stream, caught in its own cold curtains the permanent curtains of my final sadness. All those young ghosts that were me, stretched around half in the ground, heads propt in moss, and wreathed with shining strings of dew, my own old tears. I would not look at them, having forgiven having forgotten all the wrongs I've done and I've been done. Only your red flower shakes on the opposite bank like a cup of blood. Where is this stream, the crystal of my sadness the luminous, fallen statue of despair? The stream, the purest portrait of my madness and the ruby blossom, above all my dead, burning the deep, dark air? London. 1929. Father and Son Bones, bones, bones, bones nothing but gristle, and a shower of bones a storm of stones, and little pieces of blood rolling down a face in the morning. Hiding in a restaurant, let me turn to recollections of what must have been my youth. The buttercups were boiling in the park le duc se promène avec son passé. Lama, lama, sabacthani. The grand Lama, my boy, lives in Thibet. A screw of brown paper blown into a corner of the monastery throne. Lamas, my son live high in Thibet, the duke lives in his enormous mansion and _is our very kind landlord_.... the future frightens me, my boy, because I am old, and was badly educated. All men are cormorants, all the day all day's a dream, so choose your eyes carefully pull them out when it's time. Choose some more. There is no thing-in-itself. So, if you will, you may see des clairons, du soleil, des cris et du tambour ... ivre d'amour. Then, father, I want a body and a whole soul a whole heart, and a whole head to crowd itself against my body. Boy, you can't choose _those_ eyes. It may come. But instead, you'll often find another boy another girl, and they'll be twisted on the black ribs of one stone, on the angry grids of one minute. Oh, my God, my boy, be warned of me that you must see under a little red sun like a hole in a dog boys and girls served on a hot plate of tears. Oh bones bones and boys and girls early flesh that began as a vase of light tied with a sash of grass in a lap of wild leaves, set upon fur all this stolen, sat upon, and scraped into hollow mud, and wincing wind sour as a wincing, winter wind! Winter garden, Tiergarten, I went to Berlin when I was young and I saw women made of knives and forks, and boys in clothes of snow, and I confirmed both. That was one virtue. Because, once, I was like that. I hated missing anything, and that's a sort of virtue. "Yes"--"Yes," that was my motto, whereas "Always Merry and Bright" is still the motto of my cronies. I'm your Daddy, and I done me best (which is more than I'll do, dear Daddy) and there was, my boy, an April terrace, a late April terrace over a loving curve o' the Rhine a curve like that what old Venus must 'ave 'ad, blesser I mean the reel old Venus. There was the terrace and the table and between the terrace and the table, I. I was Heidelberg, and Henley--poet--and Sargent, too and an Irving hero, with my hothouse moustache . . . all this. I was your tragic papa, bedight, rather tight, all right and Lili was there, who grew in Bingen, a sprig of groundsel ready, each gloaming, for me, the yellow canary out of the Yellow Book though I really was a Henley youth, of course, both Henleys and thought Wilde a beast, though . . sorry, too . . of course. Well, she came upon the terrace, a rising milk fountain a rock garden, a waltz, my Lili and there was a grave sunset floating in the hock like a strawberry. The evening was Schiller, whispering. Mamma Rhine with the dear barges in her stomach and each cargo one century of very serious thought. Well, we devoured our dinner, boy, and kissed the moon. It became healed, like a sensible girl. Cronies . . . awfully decent . . . nothing unhealthy . . . Well . . . but, _choose your eyes_, for God's sake, my dear boy in spite of the fact I lost the fight . . . fought at Arques, Crillon, and you were . . . where was I? Don't pay any attention. I lost. You win. Choose your eyes. Father . . . I want a body, and a whole soul a whole heart, and a whole head to crowd between my sins, my body, myself. Good gracious, what on earth's the good . . . eh? And now there's no terrace, no trace. All the flights of all the terraces (the flight of the duchesses) have crumbled into the Express Dairy Co. Ltd. I think since I _did_ buy this mist of mimosa I'll have another dish of Bulgarian Lactic Milk. Never mind, Daddy, never mind. Oh, you can't understand time, boy so you can't understand me, boy. Under this fringe of withered tears my moustache is an old flag hung in an old barrack riddled so long ago with red hot mouths (rags in the Escorial fidget in the draught) I was like the hero in "Smoke" once, on the clouded terrace fruits, and the "old guard," gods and medals and trophies, épergnes ranged upon the sunset's table by Youth's butler, God. The coloured uniforms of Goethe's cavalry, the serious sunset. Now, I am broken on the wheels of a small table and a small table between a waitress and a wheezy sin. My life's a wilderness of ancient lace frozen as wee and brittle as your mother's fingers frozen by time's ice, cracked at a kiss. My life is a quadrille of shadows, with one extraordinary shadow containing the prophecy of a stone skull with a roll of black dust on its upper lip. No drum and no tropics no Lili, and no trophies, I am at the end. Now . . . wear wool, _and buy a new pair of eyes_ every day, my dear boy. Father . . . I want . . . Nore. 1929. She Across each Rhodes, beside each sea the maddened statue of maternity. The two smooth moons that are her eyes are not allowed to show surprise. She is the pelican that broke her breast to feed the treason in her nest. O red, returning tide! She was once a bride. Blown blind, with huge, sad hands blown hollow she leans, she leans by the salt, sombre shore. A silent stone beside a silent harbour she waits, she waits, nor ever knows them more. La Napoule. 1929. The Listening Child The sound of England from abroad the echo of our parents' wedding march reaches us. Like a gramophone in the next house we hear our father singing in the drawing room, the past. Beside a hot and silent sea we listen to the noises of the past. With mosquitoes for our foreign rain dropping in long ropes out of these blue clouds a rope of mosquitoes meets the sea, and spreads out like treacle pouring upon the floor. A sigh, and the marble day slides away. The echo of London, London's country, comes between the coffee and the smile (sing, cicada, shine, phosphorous) the slow-travelling echo has arrived. A manly voice. A marriage bell. La Napoule. 1929. The Secret There is a shadow where a man sometimes sings. A shadow the shape of a tear. O sun, your help! The shape of a phallus. The shape of a heart. Through the hole in my soul I watch him. It has made the only hole in my soul. Brothers, sisters, do not shine so bright. Brothers and sisters, animals, fathers and mothers, too tell me your wicked secret, for he cannot live. Giant friends, and dancing relations, you have eaten me I have been your house. Tell me your secret. Tell him, the ignorant singer, how one is able to live. Teach him to dance like you, giant friends, dancing fathers you, my sister, who hold in your hands a dancing bird you, my brother, who hold your wife in your arms like a bouquet of blood Tell me! Tell me! For he cannot live! La Napoule. 1929. Self What is this time when the sun stops and stands on our little mountain like a street lamp? A light, white ball that stops at the height of its flight a frozen game over violet, winter water. In the middle of our beginning there is a temporary death. I see a strange Mediterranean made of a variety of violets I have never seen before. Sown by the moon, perhaps. All is gone from me this morning save life itself. My hottest tear is one with the frozen stream my purest laughter shall reappear in the peacock's scream. If this should last, good-bye, my friends. There is only myself left, and that is the equivalent of nothing. When I was with you I was many. The wind has become still, has become a large, new flower, made of air. There is only the world itself left the world that was in the world. There is only myself left myself that was in myself. Wait, you whom I love, if you will until the sunset picks the last rose, slowly, and goes. It will leave, now, only black and white and I shall be the stranger on this rock. There is this transparent time when the world stops and it is then, only, that I am. La Napoule. 1929. Branch Branch that flew on the hill this morning spire of pity, rest in this cold glass. Branch, fold your wild hands, and pray for me I am twenty four. Twenty four, and purity still lies before. La Napoule. 1929. I remember I remember The light of lemons, a child's light. Open the history book in the silent north and it shines like a child. And yet I see each bough's a finger scratching the thin wind's skin each finger has a nail, each knot of fingers holds a small knife I used to know. Ah, the war in the south is ever hateful the islands of light in the sky, travelling fast and for me, whose big head's always cracked with thirst my English house is a sweet glass of water. But must I always remember my soldier childhood the knives in the trees? Nore. 1929. Two In one Parfois il parle et dit, "Je suis belle, et j'ordonne Que pour l'amour de moi vous n'aimiez que le Beau; Je suis l'Ange gardien, la Muse, et la Madone!" Baudelaire. Among wagging leaves, green pots and red I wrote you a letter when I was dead. To-day our tears are telegrams. The rain on the wires is made of tears. Look at these drops again. How could I speak or eat alone in the south? It takes four lips to make a mouth. During a year's fear I heard a voice say "Cease to pray, and on a last Friday at sunrise, stand at the white mouth of the sea up to your cold loins in water and light, and look for me. I am the thing, the meaning, and the prize that stands within the balls of your dumb eyes. Come, when I fit the sun's ring on the day's hand, come at sunrise." Summer and winter came together. Statues of summer stood along the morning and walked across the sea with hot, white feet. Light poured from them upon the ships and flowers till all the ships were flowers, and blinding flowers the fleet. From the extreme birth-pain at the sea's electric lips whence the Guardian Angel came, to the clouds of ice the blessing statues stretched. As we entered the sky, the Muse in blowing fire flew murmuring by, towards the sacrifice. As we left summer, our two isles took flight to new, blue stations high above the sea as 'twixt vast, chanting statues we four rose the islands rose on the wind, and smiled at the sight. It was to be all, all, all in a single day all summer, morning, and all winter, noon all love to love, all pain to love away from the white hot sun, all love, to the cold white moon. So love, which had broken its golden nests on the gold sea floor and burst into ships and flowers by the soft sea shore met us upon the mountain. It seemed the sun spun round the place and rose and set at our hearts' pace yet, springing from each other's mouths love left time instantly, and won the race. From side to side, the swinging seasons flow the green May valley flashes into snow while we, firm founded on each other's mouths form the world's centre, to love's centre go. Those misers' bags, our breasts, were first undone so did our gold each to the other run then all our blood ran to each other's mouths. Can two be two, when two have thus been one? O branching blood, O twin red tree! You have so kissed, and mixed with me with blood for food, and wine for bed our heart-shaped root on wine was fed with rock for clock, for leaves the snow how can we wither, or the woodman know? What can we do but to new glories grow? The cross was made, the bread was laid upon the bleeding stone the cross was mine, the right was mine to spurn the cross, alone. The moment nears, the heart appears the mountain sings and turns our two heads change to one, a strange and blesséd thing, that burns. What are the stars, poor lonely lights that hang their cold, chaste chains across the nights? They wink for tears, who only can aspire to fuse themselves, as we have done, into one star, one fire. La Napoule. 1929-1930. Saying Good-bye to a Phoenix I am so proud of my rebellious phoenix he rises, and his wings are blinding gongs. Over our small, cold London, our dead mother pour the grey flowers of his ash. Above them I hear huge, solar songs. I cry good-bye to my free phoenix with a sandy throat, and my heart is bared. But I am a poet, and I can make wings, I shall make wings and though you have flown alone to roost on the sun to-morrow the sun's nest shall be shared. London. 1930. Love Letter The fire rolls in the coal the coal screams with fire. Sick winter listens on the outer wall, shut out. Winter is wounded, her nightgown of tall fogs is striped with cold white blood, she is without fire. But small spring is shut out, remember, also also the wife and the mother, summer and autumn together. The coal it flies and falls red and red, the spitting pleasure the swiftest pleasure. And what does this pleasure think of thought? for it is fire. Of pain? for it is pleasure. Of time? for it is to-day. Of love? for it is fastest fire, and th'expense of spirit and immediate pleasure. Fire. You will grow no pansy in the loud coal no pansy grows where the coal falls, fighting. The grate is a body burning, but where's the pansy that lifts a long, black song in the breaking pleasure of fire? The coal flies, the coal dies there is no earth in that bed. You will have to come back to earth. With only a white sheet twisting, how how can you grow black pansies in a winding sheet? If you are coal, go to coal if you are a bed, go to bed until you remember the earth, the bed of earth the flower bed, and the gardener. No flowers live in linen beds coal beds, beds of fire. You must have more earth in your desire you must, you must lust is not to trust unjust. London. 1930. Entends la douce nuit qui marche I love the day, the yellow phoenix, but I love the terrible night. I have two loves, and one is the day, the peace, the brother-lover, the phoenix he is covered with folding veils of silent fire he sits and swells within a scroll of strong, harmless fire that can fill the world, and that feeds me, so that I am the world. This is the day, the gold food, my truth. I have two loves, and one is the terrible night the cannibal carnation, the soft storm beautiful, blind and black, invisible, alive and dead the carnation face, the lullaby, the kindest poison, the prison. Oh loud, loud is the night, the flower made of mouths louder than the day, louder than my heart. The sun falls, and at once there swings up from the ground, in at the window the night, the drooping thunder, the carnation. It is a burst flower, its blood has burst it, the petals are waving fans of soft blood. It is the mounting night. London. 1930. Always I will never give up asking, where are the days? Still the hero dwindles upon the marble, chained with bones. Where is the headland, where are the larger clouds? Where is the place where there are men and women? We have been insulted by all islands, all voices and times. Yet I shall ask always, when will the lovers come, where are the days? London. 1930. The Figure Believe in the body in the landscape! The wind on the rock is a flowing flower. A gun fires on the mountain, the great sound flies, like another world, over my hollow past. The flowers flow across the rock. The figure stands. A cross, a brown star in the scaffolding of the half built house. The heart. The sun bounds out of the mountain while the gun fires again and again. It is the spring. The gun fires. And a new sun whistles straight up into the centre of the sky to hang and throb and flash and shudder. White flowers and animals pour across the rocks. The figure stands between the fingers of the coming heart the slim beams of the heart, the veins the scaffolding of the house. The heart. Legs wide, and arms wide. The widest light. The man, the spreading angel. Cross. Star. The worlds are one. It is the spring. The landscapes are one. The mountain is all the mountains. The stream has swept all the world's water into one. The one rock rises. The wind lies shining on the rock. Stand, figure! Stand upon the future, while the past and the present drop, nails from your high hands and feet. Stand, figure, and live, and live! While the future swings and blazes upon the only landscape. The new sun roars above. It is all the birds. Stand, figure! All the flowers burst and roll upon the rocks. It is the end. The heart is building. It is the beginning. Stand, figure, brown star, in the heart! London. 1930. Up All a large black summer's death dies in this one moment (this nought) one afternoon. The sky, pearl in the shut shell, leans, sick asleep down the slum to the slum. The rain's chains, without one sound sung thin still chains, hang, hardly seen, locking London unlit. Tearless, I prepare the leap up, newest, longest, most far I crouch, one, struck, windless, fireless, heavy, heavy the wound hoping not, speaking not, I knot the nameless muscle. O Life! bend down, bend my bow, send my arrow high, now, not low, below. I am my arrow. I have thick hearts to kill, that have killed me. Yet, I am. I, still, am. Hurl me hard, high, and I will kill, and live, and still give life, O Life. London. August 10th. 1930. [End of _God Save the King_ by Brian Howard]