Poets Archive: Alun Lewis

You asked for neither glory nor tears, Not the sound of the organ or the prayer for the dying; Eleven years already, how quickly they pass, eleven years; You did naught but use your weapons: Death doesn’t dazzle the eyes of partisan. You can read the rest of the poem here https://www.marxists.org/archive/aragon/1954/remembrance.htm

Hilversum, Kalundborg, Brno the loud world over, Monday to Sunday, the idiot radio Spits crabs on Mozart, dedicates to you Its endless O be still insulting brew The Thunderer in love with the queen of cows Deserted Io by the waterside Who hears by radio at eventide These lousy cracklings from her hidden spouse Like  Continue Reading »

France under our feet like a worn fabric Was little by little denied our steps In the sea where the dead with sea-weed blend Bob the overturned boats like bishops caps You can read the full poem, published in the October 1945 issue of Poetry, on the Poetry Foundation website.

Strapped at the center of the blazing wheel, His flesh ice-white against the shattered mask, He tears at the easy clasp, his sobbing breaths Misting the fresh blood lightening to flame You can read the rest of the poem in the June 1945 issue of Poetry on the Poetry Foundation’s website

We move now to outside a German wood. Three men are there commended to dig a hole In which the two Jews are ordered to lie down And be buried alive by the third, who is a Pole. You can read the whole poem on the Poetry Foundation’s website one of his most famous poems  Continue Reading »

City of man, You who bequeathed us liberty in bronze, Rose of old Europe, Gifted and feared tragedienne of loss, You who bequeathed us birth and played our fall, Tell us, how shall we mention your name in the dark, O mention your death? You can read the rest of the poem, published in the  Continue Reading »

Freedom, farewell! Or so the soldiers say; And all the freedoms they spent yesterday Lure from beyond the graves, a war away. The cropped skulls resonate the wistful lies Of dead civilians: truth, reason, justice; The foolish ages haunt their unaccepting eyes. You can read the rest of the poem, published in the August 1943  Continue Reading »

The lights are beginning to go out in the barracks. They persist or return, as the wakeful hollow, But only for an instant; then the windows blacken For all the hours of the soldier’s life. You can read the rest of this poem, published in the August 1943 issue of Poetry, on the Poetry Foundation  Continue Reading »

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took my lover’s tallness off to war, Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an empty heart-cup for. He won’t be coming back here any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew When he went walking grandly out that door  Continue Reading »

If you should hear my name among those killed, Say you have lost a friend, half man, half boy, Who, if the years had spared him might have built Within him courage strength and harmony Uncouth and garrulous his tangled mind Seething with warm ideas of truth and light, His help was worthless. Yet had  Continue Reading »

As one who, gazing at a vista    Of beauty, sees the clouds close in, And turns his back in sorrow, hearing    The thunderclouds begin. So we, whose life was all before us,    Our hearts with sunlight filled, Left in the hills our books and flowers,    Descended and were killed. Write on  Continue Reading »

The Night lies with her body crookedly flung In agony across the sharp hills; By the fitful moon her nostrils are taut, quivering; She is tensed in cold sweat and lonely fear, Giving birth in dark, sly, trodden places To her unlawful issue, blind, hideous Death. Across the pain-jerked body of the Night We must  Continue Reading »

(Fighter-Pilot, killed in action, 1940) How brilliantly you flew for such short years, Roger, across the small horizon of my life, Like laughter, borne on shining wings! Now you have sped into the Sun, And stand ennobled in proud robes of flame. We can no longer see you, For the light that clothes you is  Continue Reading »

All my world has suddenly gone quiet Like a railway carriage as it draws into a station; Conversation fails, laughter dies, And the turning of the pages and the striking of matches cease. All life is lapsed into nervous consciousness, Frozen, like blades of grass in blocks of ice, Except where one small persistent voice  Continue Reading »

In the midst of so much ugly metal, Metal of gun and metal of mind, We saw, and smiled, at little things – At dogs and children in the road; At moths in tasselled grasses; at a friendly horse, Oak-apples, tall buttercups and pigeon cotes! Grant me the gift that you have shown today, God  Continue Reading »