Manifesto

A spectre is haunting Europe, with no name and a certain tread and a certain taste for youth, moving across the odourless canals of Amsterdam, almost visible now, hissing through the Hapsburg-Christian halls at Melk, lying along the fished-out Seine; above splendid Rome it sees what the Hun saw; the point of all jokes, it never laughs; at once it riots, hides, and restores Order; it is the mists over the wire at every border.

We are deployed along the summer here in iced rooms, as America retires from the weather in phoney shantung jackets. Daddy reads the Nation, more withdrawn lately. Mother deserts Sheen for a Jebbie lecture. Cissy sighs and puts on Mabel Mercer for the fifth time. Look at the ivy in the grate, its plastic leaves our crisp summer fire. Look at the sharp red dust boiling outside—Louisiana is like Mars, hostile, dyed, not really meant for human habitation—which is useful. Here I can watch it happening, the spectre growing by art and discontent, dispassionately. For the hills of Austria sound with bell-throated cows, and protest. The hearties laughing in the Oxford station, the old women in the Swan in Gloucester, lovers in the parks in Lisbon, grapple with the spectre, cry out against death, refusing to give up hope in conferences and truces.

PL

About the Author

Paris Leary

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Manage following

Poetry

Literature

A spectre is haunting Europe, with no name and a certain tread and a certain taste for youth, moving across the odourless canals of Amsterdam, almost visible now, hissing through the Hapsburg-Christian halls at Melk, lying along the fished-out Seine; above splendid Rome it sees what the Hun saw; the point of all jokes, it never laughs; at once it riots, hides, and restores Order; it is the mists over the wire at every border.

We are deployed along the summer here in iced rooms, as America retires from the weather in phoney shantung jackets. Daddy reads the Nation, more withdrawn lately. Mother deserts Sheen for a Jebbie lecture. Cissy sighs and puts on Mabel Mercer for the fifth time. Look at the ivy in the grate, its plastic leaves our crisp summer fire. Look at the sharp red dust boiling outside—Louisiana is like Mars, hostile, dyed, not really meant for human habitation—which is useful. Here I can watch it happening, the spectre growing by art and discontent, dispassionately. For the hills of Austria sound with bell-throated cows, and protest. The hearties laughing in the Oxford station, the old women in the Swan in Gloucester, lovers in the parks in Lisbon, grapple with the spectre, cry out against death, refusing to give up hope in conferences and truces.