Email Poem

Your IP Address: 18.219.31.133

From Email:	Required Email Address Not Valid.
To Email:	Email Address Not Valid. Required
Subject	Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem	I The bitterness. the misery, the wretchedness of childhood Put me out of love with God. I can't believe in God's goodness; I can believe In many avenging gods. Most of all I believe In gods of bitter dullness, Cruel local gods Who scared my childhood. II I've seen people put A chrysalis in a match-box, "To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come." But when it broke its shell It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison And tried to climb to the light For space to dry its wings. That's how I was. Somebody found my chrysalis And shut it in a match-box. My shrivelled wings were beaten, Shed their colours in dusty scales Before the box was opened For the moth to fly. III I hate that town; I hate the town I lived in when I was little; I hate to think of it. There wre always clouds, smoke, rain In that dingly little valley. It rained; it always rained. I think I never saw the sun until I was nine -- And then it was too late; Everything's too late after the first seven years. The long street we lived in Was duller than a drain And nearly as dingy. There were the big College And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall. There were the sordid provincial shops -- The grocer's, and the shops for women, The shop where I bought transfers, And the piano and gramaphone shop Where I used to stand Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone. How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was! On wet days -- it was always wet -- I used to kneel on a chair And look at it from the window. The dirty yellow trams Dragged noisily along With a clatter of wheels and bells And a humming of wires overhead. They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines And then the water ran back Full of brownish foam bubbles. There was nothing else to see -- It was all so dull -- Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellas Running along the grey shiny pavements; Sometimes there was a waggon Whose horses made a strange loud hollow sound With their hoofs Through the silent rain. And there was a grey museum Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals And a few relics of the Romans -- dead also. There was a sea-front, A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it, Three piers, a row of houses, And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour. I was like a moth -- Like one of those grey Emperor moths Which flutter through the vines at Capri. And that damned little town was my match-box, Against whose sides I beat and beat Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy As that damned little town. IV At school it was just as dull as that dull High Street. The front was dull; The High Street and the other street were dull -- And there was a public park, I remember, And that was damned dull, too, With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick, And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on, And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in, And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones, And the swings, which were for "Board-School children," And its gravel paths. And on Sundays they rang the bells, From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches. They had a Salvation Army. I was taken to a High Church; The parson's name was Mowbray, "Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it --" That's what I heard people say. I took a little black book To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church, And I had to sit on a hard bench, Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed, And then there was nothing to do Except to play trains with the hymn-books. There was nothing to see, Nothing to do, Nothing to play with, Except that in an empty room upstairs There was a large tin box Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta, Of the Declaration of Independence And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada. There were also several packets of stamps, Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots, Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak, Indians and Men-of-war From the United States, And the green and red portraits Of King Francobello Of Italy. V I don't believe in God. I do believe in avenging gods Who plague us for sins we never sinned But who avenge us. That's why I'll never have a child, Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box For the moth to spoil and crush its brght colours, Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.
	Type the characters you see in the picture Required