Poem
- Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
- It isn't fit for humans now,
- There isn't grass to graze a cow.
- Swarm over, Death!
- Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
- Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
- Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
- Tinned minds, tinned breath.
- Mess up the mess they call a town -
- A house for ninety-seven down
- And once a week a half a crown
- For twenty years,
- And get that man with double chin
- Who'll always cheat and always win,
- Who washes his repulsive skin
- In women's tears,
- And smash his desk of polished oak
- And smash his hands so used to stroke
- And stop his boring dirty joke
- And make him yell.
- But spare the bald young clerks who add
- The profits of the stinking cad;
- It's not their fault that they are mad,
- They've tasted Hell.
- It's not their fault they do not know
- The birdsong from the radio,
- It's not their fault they often go
- To Maidenhead
- And talk of sport and makes of cars
- In various bogus-Tudor bars
- And daren't look up and see the stars
- But belch instead.
- In labour-saving homes, with care
- Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
- And dry it in synthetic air
- And paint their nails.
- Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
- To get it ready for the plough.
- The cabbages are coming now;
- The earth exhales.
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Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The poem refreshes life so that we share,
For a moment, the first idea . . . It satisfies
Belief in an immaculate beginning
And sends us, winged by an unconscious will,
To an immaculate end. We move between these points:
From that ever-early candor to its late plural....”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“Ive never read a political poem thats accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.”
—Howard Nemerov (19201991)