Two Poems

Novissima Sinica

Smoke-drift from the Somme and Verdun
disclosing the black cumulus of Monsieur le Science
towards which the sons of Newcomen and Curie
     stagger without conviction.
Sheltering from a downpour in a Cambridge
 bookshop
and drunk on Godwin, Shelley, Hamilton, Cavour,
      Xu Zhimo comes home to Pater.

Trail after Russell to London! Russell lingers in
 China.
Sniff at the new blooms of Lowes Dickinson!
Petals crumbling to guitar dust in pine shadow,
        massacres by new warlords
assuaged by draperies in The Virgin of the Rocks,
famine inhumed with bluets in the middle distance.
...