Midnight Air Raid

Beyond our factories, like caterpillars curled in a sham death,

Rivers signal their quicksilver treachery; and, in answer,

The guns of midnight pound from roots of earth

Bombarding with their radium mouth and prong of cancer

Eating out the lungs of countries in a bubble of bloody breath.

Sensitive fingers of searchlights pick the pockets of dark.

These are surgeon's pitiless forceps imprisoning in their grip

Anaerobic death, there, in the heart of air, lurking

To burst the harmless tissues of cities. It is an antisepsis

In this world of blood, with an unsuspecting child, the dawn,

forgotten larks.

Now sirens unleash civilian anguish. In a reflex they

Stumble from an underworld of dreams, whom abortive desire

(Pillared in moonlit limbs) makes gray.

Freedom's involuntary fighters, knowing no refuge save in fiery

Consciousness, rampant light and the resolution of day.

Night that sealed their visions, drained all thought an hour

Ago, is now their bodyguard; but real defense is an illumination,

Ally of the sun, and fills their brain with staggering power

Where sanity tremors on madness, to beat down explosion

Of wind, and the thunder's stupor, in a turbulent underground

anger.

Here artist and scientist concur to admire

A formal pattern of battle, where herring-bone squadrons

Elude the swaying bars of light, and white fire

From London's living furnace, flung up like a tilted cauldron,

Splits the atom of doom, and makes of man's march one un-

ending gyre.