Retrospect

Go back –

Six feet of snow on the Aragon front;

While here

Kids slide in the roadways

Steadied feet thudding in the gutters:

Ice blurs

The red orange blue of neon lights –

The harlot shops invite.

But there

The café lights blink and blacken

Ribs tighten, skin grows ware –

After the momentary adjustment

A fumbling for the tasteless glass –

A startled touch of warm-whorled fingers

A greedy intake of smoke

-       The lung-shock battens the nerves –

Strange faces glow intimate

Red-arc’d by the fitful cigarette.

Distant shots

Snap at lit windows –

Tenseness strangles the blood –

The walls reverberate

From an anti-aircraft in the church next door

That coughs dully,  cough,  cough…

Vienen los aviones, ay ay,

Los aviones, says some woman –

Carven deu, tancat la boca …

Then the bombs

Belching earth-pits

Quagging the ground,

One two three sudden,

Four, wait wait wait five,

SIX god that’s it

Shattering, rumbling racket

Glass smashing and one thin endless scream.

Then a dullness in the head,

We stand over the table,

A glass falls, rings,

The air tastes of the Metro.

The cigarettes are all out.

A no-sex voice from the street

Cries Sanidad Sanidad

-       Christ let’s get out of this …

Ay, alli mucha de la muerte hay,

Y aqui, que hay mejor.

(First published in Stephen Spender & John Lehmann eds. Poems for Spain, Hogarth Press, 1939).