Celebration

NOTES IN PASSING

CELEBRATION

Victory marches with bugles down the street

And flags that splash their brilliance on the air;

Victory tramples on flowers abloom and sweet

And ascends with puffed chest a marble stair.

And yet what need has victory of wine,

Of baying crowds, of roses flung by girls?

Victory itself is drunk without the vine,

Victory itself staggers, clamors, and whirls.

To celebrate what celebrates itself

Is folly. I shall celebrate defeat.

How sadly clutching their poor scanty pelf

The conquered cringe unnoticed in the street!

I shall celebrate my defeat with drums;

I shall dance to the blaring of the brass;

I shall go where wine bubbles and song hums;

In the night the sleepers will hear me pass.

And when I go reeling down the still street

More drunk, more gay than the victorious,

I shall have tasted the bitter of defeat

And made its celebration glorious.