The great pulsation passed. Glass lay around me
 Resurrected from the end. I walked
 Along streets of slate-jabbering houses,
 Against an acrid cloud of dust, I saw
 The houses kneel, revealed each in its abject
 Prayer, my prayer as well: 'Oh god,
 Spare me the lot that is my neighbour's.'
 Then, in the upper sky, indifferent to our
 Sulphurous nether hell, I saw
 The dead of the bombed graveyard, a calm tide
 Under the foam of stars above the town.
 And on the roof-tops there stood London prophets
 Saints of Covent Garden, Parliament Hill Fields,
 Hampstead, Hyde Park Corner, Saint John's Wood,
 Crying aloud in cockney fanatic voices:
 And prayed against the misery manufactured
 In mines and ships and mills, against
 The greed of merchants, vanity of priests.
 They sang: 'We souls from the abyss
 To whom the stars are fields of flowers,
 Tell you: Rejoice in the abyss!
 For hollow is the skull, the vacuum
 In the gold ball, St Paul's gold cross.
 Unless you will accept the emptiness
 Within the bells of foxgloves and cathedrals,
 Each life must feed upon the deaths of others,
 The shamelessly entreating prayer
 Of every house will be that it is spared
 Calamity that strikes its neighbour.'


















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