DESPOTISMS - Richard Garnett Poems

 
 

Poems » richard garnett » despotisms

DESPOTISMS

        I: THE MOTOR: 1905

From hedgerows where aromas fain would be
   New volleyed odours execrably arise;
   The flocks, with hell-smoke in their patient eyes,
Into the ditch from bawling ruin flee:
Spindrift of one abominated sea
   Along all roads in wrecking fury flies
   Till on young strangled leaf, on bloom that dies,
In this far plot it writes a rune for me.

Vast intimate tyranny! Nature dispossessed
   Helplessly hates thee, whose symbolic flare
Lights up (with what reiterance unblest!)
   Entrails of horror in a world thought fair.
False God of pastime thou, vampire of rest,
   Augur of what pollution, what despair?