Labour an estren

WORK OF THE FOREIGNER

 

Strip. Despoil our Country

Sweep away the sacred oaks of the Druids

The birches of the Celts and the yew-trees

---And the chestnuts of our youth---

In which our birds sang.

Start fires in the moor

In the heath. In the broom waving

Like seas of golden water

And write on the bare back

Of the old Country, in every foreign language

Poems of mourning

Ugly poems.

With their stiff letters

Rigid as their steel faces:

Long rows of lead soldiers

Tedious songs of their resin trees

With strange names!

And soon ... If we don't pay attention

On the great organ

Of their dark and sad forests

---Fertilized with the ashes of our trees---

The Atlantic Wind

Will play while singing

...The Requiem of our Country.

 

November 1967.