Louis MacNeice

55



The comedian spilling the apple-cart

Of doubles entendres and doggerel verses
And the next day begins

Again with alarm and anxious
Listening to bulletins

From distant, measured voices
Arguing for peace

While the zero hour approaches,

While the eagles gather and the petrol and oil and grease
Have all been applied and the vultures back the eagles.

; But once again

I The crisis is put off and things look better
; And we feel negotiation is not vain —

' Save my skin and damn my conscience.
jAnd negotiation wins,

| If you can call it winning,

And here we are — just as before — safe in our skins;
j Glory to God for Munich.

! And stocks go up and wrecks
i Are salved and politicians’ reputations
j Go up like Jack-on-the-Beanstalk; only the Czechs
} Go down and without fighting.


56



ix

Now we are back to normal, now the mind is
Back to the even tenor of the usual day

Skidding no longer across the uneasy camber
Of the nightmare way.

We are safe though others have crashed the railings
Over the river ravine; their wheel-tracks carve the
bank

But after the event all we can do is argue

And count the widening ripples where they sank.

October comes with rain whipping around the ankles
In waves of white at night

And filling the raw clay trenches (the parks of London
Are a nasty sight).

In a week I return to work, lecturing, coaching,

As impresario of the Ancient Greeks

Who wore the chiton and lived on fish and olives
And talked philosophy or smut in cliques;

Who believed in youth and did not gloze the unpleasant
Consequences of age;

What is life, one said, or what is pleasant
Once you have turned the page

Of love? The days grow worse, the dice are loaded
Against the living man who pays in tears for breath;