Week-Night Service

 The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling, 
Imploring, protesting 
They know, but clamorously falling 
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

The silver moon 
That somebody has spun so high 
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught 
In the net of the night’s balloon, 
And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in the sky
Smiling at naught, 
Unless the winking star that keeps her company
Makes little jests at the bells’ insanity,
As if he knew aught! 

The patient Night 
Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags, 
She neither knows nor cares 
Why the old church sobs and brags;
The light distresses her eyes, and tears
Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her face,
Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells’ loud clattering disgrace.

The wise old trees 
Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
While a car at the end of the street goes by with a laugh;
As by degrees 
The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt, 
And the stars can chaff 
The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old church
Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that lurch
In its cenotaph.

Form: Free verse

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