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ANGLOSAXON STREET, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dawndrizzle ended, dampness steams from
Last Line: Waiting brief for milkhind, mornstar and worldrise.
Subject(s): Ghettos; Streets; Avenues


Dawndrizzle ended, dampness steams from
blotching brick and blank plasterwaste.
Faded housepatterns, hoary and finicky,
unfold stuttering, stick like a phonograph.
Over the eaves and over dank roofs
peep giraffetowers, pasted planless
against grey sky, great dronecliffs
like cutouts for kids, clipped in two dimensions. ....

Here is a ghetto gotten for goyim,
O with care denuded of nigger and kike.
No coonsmell rankles, reeks only cellarrot,
attar of carexhaust, catcorpse and cookinggrease.
Imperial hearts heave in this haven.
Cracks across windows are welded with slogans;
There'll Always Be An England enhances geraniums,
and V's for a Victory vanquish the housefly.

Ho! with climbing sun, heading from cocoons,
go bleached beldames, garnished in bargainbasements,
festooned with shoppingbags, farded, flatarched,
bigthewed Saxonwives, stepping over buttrivers,
waddling back to suckle smallfry, wienerladen.

Hoy! with sunslope, shrieking over hydrants,
flood from learninghall the lean fingerlings,
Nordic, nobblecheeked, not all clean of nose,
leaping Commando-wise into leprous lanes.

What! after whistleblow, spewed from wheelboat,
after daylong doughtiness, dire handplay
in sewertrench or sandpit, come Saxonthegns,
Junebrown Jutekings, jawslack for meat.

Sit after supper on smeared doorsteps,
not humbly swearing hatedeeds on Huns,
profiteers, politicians, pacifists and Jews.

Then by twobit magic to muse in movie,
unlock picturehoard, or lope to alehall,
soaking bleakly in beer, skittleless.

Home again to hotbox and humid husbandhood,
in slumbertrough adding sleepily to Anglekin.
Alongside in lanenooks carling and leman
caterwaul and clip, careless of Saxonry,
with moonglow and haste and a higher heartbeat.

Slumbers now slumtrack, unstinks, cooling,
waiting brief for milkhind, mornstar and worldrise.





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