Despotisms

By Louise Imogen Guiney
I: THE MOTOR: 1905

From hedgerows where aromas fain would be
    New volleyed odours execrably arise;
    The flocks, with hell-smoke in their patient eyes,
Into the ditch from bawling ruin flee:
Spindrift of one abominated sea
    Along all roads in wrecking fury flies
    Till on young strangled leaf, on bloom that dies,
In this far plot it writes a rune for me.

Vast intimate tyranny! Nature dispossessed
    Helplessly hates thee, whose symbolic flare
Lights up (with what reiterance unblest!)
    Entrails of horror in a world thought fair.
False God of pastime thou, vampire of rest,
    Augur of what pollution, what despair?
Copyright Credit: Louise Imogen Guiney, “Despotisms” from Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney. Copyright 1927 and renewed © 1955 by Grace Guiney. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Source: Happy Ending: The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005)