Classic Poem

I.

I have embraced my mistress
nobly, delicately,
like a god, largely,
proportioned to her proportions
by steel subjoined to steel
and the might of the roads.

II.

My mistress has taken over the entirety of my blood and being
(all my inheritance)
a charge, short of blood and being
not dischargeable.

III.

It has been so before me with my fathers many eyes;
for she loved not as a woman loved
during the bloom of beauty and in the shadow of death,
but without diminution and by the deathless Giant
the forms of whose thought concerning her specify
each in its time the generations of men,
and his experiences of her love
are their intimate substance and transient material.

IV.

But we, men of England for the time being,
we have wooed her
not with the music, not with the might of men
but with a roar of throttles
(tongue of Jurassic monsters)
and the potential of petroleum
(earth's passion stored in the lachrymatory of rock)
incontinent to ignite
even as the Sun, its forbear, Phaebus carbonifer,
explodes
uninterruptedly
intent with titanic effluence to Evade Space.

V.

We have possessed her
metallically
with arms and fingers of roads thrust out across her.
The towns
(each with a hundred arms, Briareus),
respecting only London by discrimination of size)
are the reservoirs of our lust,
whence periodically
we issue out at the first opportunity
in our Rolls-Royces (1934 model)
our 1927 two seater Cowleys
and long-bonneted Lanchesters,
on our two-strokes and four-strokes.
By machinery and POWER
we are united with our country.

VI.

And of the union between mantown and motherland
a child comes to birth
whose features, O Englishmen!
must resemble the father then only begetter.

VII.

Thrusting through the air at 80 m.p.h.
we are aware
with the awareness at the core of the earth
as he penetrates space,
in the consciousness and independence of POWER,
apostate from the Sun
at m.p.h.
(But the cold elder Moon
defies the earth scarce at all,
tottering).

IX.

By these aids of planetary power,
we crave
to intensify intercourse
with Earth, our England, the bride affianced
of the Giant the unwinking one
who waits in the background
behind and above
Us, our multitudes, customs and generations,
in the Cavern of centuries the Spirit of Race.

X.

O ye Towns!
beware how ye lust after, claw, and violate
the beloved of that Great One
and the Bride of Heaven.
Only those who
love
are prepared to die, and
only those who
are prepared to die
fight.