The Landscape near an Aerodrome

More beautiful and soft than any moth

With burring furred antennae feeling its huge path

Through dusk, the air-liner with shut-off engines

Glides over suburbs and the sleeves set trailing tall

To point the wind. Gently, broadly, she falls,

Scarcely disturbing charted currents of air.

Lulled by descent, the travellers across sea

And across feminine land indulging its easy limbs

In miles of softness, now let their eyes trained by watching

Penetrate through dusk the outskirts of this town

Here where industry shows a fraying edge.

Here they may see what is being done.

Beyond the winking masthead light

And the landing-ground, they observe the outposts

Of work: chimneys like lank black fingers

Or figures frightening and mad: and squat buildings

With their strange air behind trees, like women's faces

Shattered by grief. Here where few houses

Moan with faint light behind their blinds,

They remark the unhomely sense of complaint, like a dog

Shut out and shivering at the foreign moon.

In the last sweep of love, they pass over fields

Behind the aerodrome, where boys play all day

Hacking dead grass: whose cries, like wild birds

Settle upon the nearest roofs

But soon are hid under the loud city.

Then, as they land, they hear the tolling bell

Reaching across the landscape of hysteria,

To where larger than all the charcoaled batteries

And imaged towers against that dying sky,

Religion stands, the church blocking the sun.