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.'
Copyright Credit: Stephen Spender, "Rejoice in the Abyss" from New Collected Poems, published by Faber. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender.
Source: Collected Poems 1928-1985 (Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1985)