Richard Aldington

Childhood

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.

The Poplar

WHY do you always stand there shivering

Between the white stream and the road?

The people pass through the dust

On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;

The waggoners go by at down;

The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!

You are more beautiful than they are.

I know that the white wind loves you,

Is always kissing you and turning up

The white lining of your green petticoat.

The sky darts through you like blue rain,

And the grey rain drips on your flanks

And loves you.

And I have seen the moon

Slip his silver penny into your pocket

As you straightened your hair;

And the white mist curling and hesitating

Like a bashful lover about your knees.

I know you, poplar;

I have watched you since I was ten.

But if you had a little real love,

A little strength,

You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers

And go walking down the white road

Behind the waggoners.

There are beautiful beeches down beyond the hill.

Will you always stand there shivering?

Round-Pond

WATER ruffled and speckled by galloping wind

Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breaks

Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight.

The shining of the sun upon the water

Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals

In a long wavering irregular flight.

The water is cold to the eye

As the wind to the cheek.

In the budding chestnuts

Whose sticky buds glimmer and are half-burst open

The starlings make their clitter-clatter;

And the blackbirds in the grass

Are getting as fat as the pigeons.

Too-hoo, this is brave;

Even the cold wind is seeking a new mistress.