The poem
There was a saviour Rarer than radium, Commoner than water, crueller than truth; Children kept from the sun Assembled at his tongue To hear the golden note turn in a groove, Prisoners of wishes locked their eyes In the jails and studies of his keyless smiles.
The voice of children says From a lost wilderness There was calm to be done in his safe unrest, When hindering man hurt Man, animal, or bird We hid our fears in that murdering breath, Silence, silence to do, when earth grew loud, In lairs and asylums of the tremendous shout.
There was glory to hear In the churches of his tears, Under his downy arm you sighed as he struck, O you who could not cry On to the ground when a man died Put a tear for joy in the unearthly flood And laid your cheek against a cloud-formed shell: Now in the dark there is only yourself and myself.
Two proud, blacked brothers cry, Winter-locked side by side, To this inhospitable hollow year, O we who could not stir One lean sigh when we heard Greed on man beating near and fire neighbour But wailed and nested in the sky-blue wall Now break a giant tear for the little known fall,
For the drooping of homes That did not nurse our bones, Brave deaths of only ones but never found, Now see, alone in us, Our own true strangers' dust Ride through the doors of our unentered house. Exiled in us we arouse the soft, Unclenched, armless, silk and rough love that breaks all rocks.