Here not the flags, the rhythmic
Feet of returning legions; nor at household shrines
The small tears’ offering, the postcards
Treasured for years, nor the names cut in brass.
Here not the lowered voices,
Not the drum.
Only at suppertime, rain slanting
Among our orchards, printing its coded
But peaceful messages across our pavements.
Only the cryptic swift performing
His ordered evolutions through the sky.
Only the growing.
And in the night, the secret voices
Of summer, the progression
Of hours without suspense, without surprise.
Only the moon beholds us, even the hunting owl
May watch us without malice.
Without envy.
We are no cowards, we are pictures
Of ordinary people, as you once were.
Blame not nor pity us; we are the people
Who laugh in dreams before the ramping boar
Appears, before the loved one’s death.
We are your hope.
In Neutrality, the only poem Keyes wrote about America, Americans are talking of their country, still at peace, to the English, who are at war. Written five months before the US entered the conflict, it spoke truly for people he did not know, who recognized the lull before the coming storm. Keyes said it was a poem for which he had ‘genuine affection’; he considered it to be very ‘finished’, but said it did not have ‘any deep feeling in it’. John Guenther: Sidney Keyes: A Biographical Inquiry, London Magazine Editions, 1967