Landscape with Figures

I

Perched on a great fall of air
a pilot or angel looking down
on some eccentric chart, the plain
dotted with useless furniture,
discerns crouching on the sand vehicles
squashed dead or still entire, stunned
like beetles : scattered wingcases and
legs, heads, appear when the dust settles.
But you who like Thomas come
to poke fingers in the wounds
find monuments, and metal posies:
on each disordered tomb
the steel is torn into fronds
by the lunatic explosive.
 
II

On sand and scrub the dead men wriggle
in their dowdy clothes. They are mimes
who express silence and futile aims
enacting this prone and motionless struggle
at a queer angle to the scenery
crawling on the boards of the stage like walls
deaf to the one who opens his mouth and calls
silently. The décor is terrible tracery
of iron. The eye and mouth of each ?gure
bear the cosmetic blood and hectic
colours death has the only list of.
A yard more, and my little ?nger
could trace the maquillage* of these stony actors.
I am the ?gure writhing on the backcloth.
 
III

I am the figure burning in hell
and the figure of the grave priest
observing everyone who passed
and that of the lover. I am all
the aimless pilgrims, the pedants and courtiers
more easily you believe me a pioneer
and murdering villain without fear
without remorse hacking in the throat. Yes
I am these and I am the craven
the remorseful the distressed
penitent: not passing from life to life
but all these angels and devils are driven
into my mind like beasts. I am possessed,
the house whose wall contains the dark strife
the arguments of hell with heaven.