I
And yet we shall move on-
At first with slow and shuffling gait,
But time shall heal
We shall pour the Jordan-water of silence
On the mangled concrete arteries
On the smoke and on the smells,
On the shadows that still taint our sleep
Yes, we shall consign these
To the un-looked-at, whispering deep;
And the direst heaving of the baleful sea
Shall dissolve, in resolute cups of tea.
II
Time shall heal, of course, but that times is not now,
For though faces, with lips that might have kissed,
Faces that might have sung lullabyes,
Faces, with hair;- golden, brown, black or grey
Faces with eyes, and eyes with rods and cones and retinae,
Though such faces have become
Photographs, yet the eyes still stare
From posters stuck on bus-stop walls
From television screens, in time to the background score
Of carefully lugubrious newsreader voices, to the roar
Of madly dancing winds, pushing a maddened world along
And so now is not the time to heal, not yet
We shall sit awhile in darkened rooms and reflect
on our questions that shall go unanswered, as we wrap
Around our screams, the numbing blanket of the dusk
And what then of the questions that the dead shall ask?
III
And what then of the questions that the dead shall ask?
What indeed, while they still stare from posters and television screens,
Are yet to sink into the picture-postcard confines
Of old family photographs, to be taken out and seen
At gatherings and such-like, perhaps quietly wept-over.
Now, when lives in their seconds and their years,
The tremulous tapestry of their laughter and their tears
Still speak, from behind the pall of a month, a slash, and a date
And fill the sky with their questions, their questions flood the river,
Now, how shall we answer the questions that they ask?
No, now is not the time to heal, but to quake,
To tear at hair and mountains, to froth, to scream
Now's no time for fretful dreams, but to wake
Eternally vigilant, now's the time to howl
Unwept tears at the bloody moon
IV
Urizen, Urizen!
Who were they? What were they?
Were they the sons of men?
Spawned in what miasmic waters,
In what noisome fen?
Urizen, Urizen
Yes, they were the sons of men.
