This mild late-winter afternoon

Everything’s unfamiliar;

Vacant silence as of a peace!

After a fifty~year-long war.

The planes are hunted from the sky,

All round me is the natural day.

I watch this empty country road

Roll half’a century away.

And looking round me I recall

That here the patient ploughmen came

Long years ago, and so remember

What they were and what I am.

I think, the aeroplanes will pass,

Power’s stupendous equipage,

And leave with simpler dynasties

The mute detritus of an age.

The daring pilot will come down,

Cold marble wings will mark his place,

And soft persuasion of the grass

Restrain the swiftest of his race.

The cycle will come round again,

Earth will repair its broken day,

And pastoral Europe dream again

Of little wars waged far away …

A week refutes a prophecy

That only ages can make true.

The deafening distractions wait,

Industrious fiends, for me and you.