France

Some truths flame, incandesce--others like the blue
Deep of the timeless fiord, or fires seen through husk of ice,
Wait. Truth is hate. This is France. No other necessity’s
Afoot in the corn, in the coal-mine, erect on the castle at Saverne
In the full of the banished tricolor, the one put back there.

France is married to grief, bears grief’s brood, is grief’s cold widow;
The name of her peace is Death. This, after the breaking of the pulses,
The heart staggered, the brain convulsed, the nerve paralysed.
Somewhere in it all remained the empty zero hour -
Hate enters the zero hour; good. This womb shall bear life again.
Who is hate? She has made him her only lover,
Single in purpose as a magic; as luminous, as multiple as star dust.

Hate like a little familiar animal has the freedom of the house,
The freedom of road and city. There is hate in a sou,
Hate in a crumb, in the grinding of tram wheels,
In the vin du bistro and the mumbling monologue,
Hate in a harlot’s shoe, in the priest’s breviary leaves,
In the oil greasing a lathe, and the cobbler’s broken awl.
Hate backwards and forwards, in the axles turning and all their echoes,
In the May Day muguet and the iron flowers of November,
Hate in the leaves fallen and the red buds to come,
In the breeze and the frost and the pool, in all the dying and renewing,
Hate climbing the curve of the circle -
Look look how the womb fills--like a moon approaching the full.

(1941)