Rejoice in the Abyss

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: 'In the midst of Life is Death!' They kneeled 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.'