He plants his armed feet on the lips of babes
And the soft breasts of women.
He tears the young men furiously,
And kneads their flesh as dough.
He squeezes their blood,
So that it runs swift from the presses.
The fields lie barren and the chimneys are without smoke.
White-footed Day steals over the mountains
And shakes the defiant lances of his coming against the
sky. Evening draws her crimson veil about her ankles And steps down into the flowing purple. There is silence as the stillness of Death. Sparrows nest in a skull in a field which has been plowed
with shells, and watered with blood. The little brook has washed itself clean And babbles of Death. A wren, scarce larger than a bullet. Has builded in the chimney of a fallen cottage. Nature sits in her temple, indifferent ; Weaving, ceaselessly, the filaments of Beauty.
TRUTH: Like a great harpy War has come between the sun and the
grass And has darkened the earth with his shadow. He devours greedily the souls of men. He tears the subtle spinnings of Peace. Great cities are his torches.
And Man lies upon the wasted earth, face downward, A mourner.
XXII. TRUTH: Turmoil, fret, strife, eager, cruel, relentless: Civilization. The din of factories and roar of furnaces ; The continuous rumble of trains ; Rattle of cars and trucks ;
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