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.
Read more about this topic: Slough (poem)
Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)
“The poem goes from the poets gibberish to
The gibberish of the vulgate and back again.
Does it move to and fro or is it of both
At once? Is it a luminous flittering
Or the concentration of a cloudy day?”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“I have never felt a placard and a poem are in any way similar.”
—Kristin Hunter (b. 1931)