In 1929

I A whim of Time, the general arbiter, Proclaims the love, instead of death, of friends. Under the domed sky and athletic sun Three stand naked: the new, bronzed German The communist clerk, and myself, being English. Yet to unwind the travelled sphere twelve years Then two take arms, spring to a soldier's posture: Or else roll on the thing a further ten, The third - this clerk with world-offended eyes— Builds with red hands his heaven: makes our bones The necessary scaffolding to peace. II Now, I suppose, the once-envious dead Have learned a strict philosophy of clay After long centuries, to haunt us no longer In the churchyard or at the end of the lane Or howling at the edge of the city Beyond the last bean rows, near the new factory. Our fathers killed. And yet there lives no feud Like Hamlet's, prompted on the castle stair: There falls no shadow on our blank of peace, We three together, struck across our path, No warning finger threatening each alone. III Our fathers' misery, their spirits' mystery, The cynic's cruelty, weave this philosophy: That the history of man, traced purely from dust, Is lipping skulls on the revolving rim Or war, us three each other's murderers - Lives, risen a moment, joined or separate, Fall heavily, then are ever separate, Sod lifted, turned, slapped back again with spade.