I sit in one of the dives
                                      On Fifty-second Street
                                      Uncertain and afraid
                                      As the clever hopes expire
                                      Of a low dishonest decade:
                                      Waves of anger and fear
                                      Circulate over the bright 
                                      And darkened lands of the earth,
                                      Obsessing our private lives;
                                      The unmentionable odour of death
                                      Offends the September night.
                                      
                                      Accurate scholarship can 
                                      Unearth the whole offence
                                      From Luther until now
                                      That has driven a culture mad,
                                      Find what occurred at Linz,
                                      What huge imago made
                                      A psychopathic god:
                                      I and the public know
                                      What all schoolchildren learn,
                                      Those to whom evil is done
                                      Do evil in return. 
                                      
                                      Exiled Thucydides knew
                                      All that a speech can say
                                      About Democracy,
                                      And what dictators do,
                                      The elderly rubbish they talk
                                      To an apathetic grave;
                                      Analysed all in his book,
                                      The enlightenment driven away,
                                      The habit-forming pain,
                                      Mismanagement and grief:
                                      We must suffer them all again.
                                      
                                      Into this neutral air
                                      Where blind skyscrapers use
                                      Their full height to proclaim
                                      The strength of Collective Man,
                                      Each language pours its vain
                                      Competitive excuse:
                                      But who can live for long
                                      In an euphoric dream;
                                      Out of the mirror they stare,
                                      Imperialism's face
                                      And the international wrong.
                                      
                                      Faces along the bar
                                      Cling to their average day:
                                      The lights must never go out,
                                      The music must always play,
                                      All the conventions conspire 
                                      To make this fort assume
                                      The furniture of home;
                                      Lest we should see where we are,
                                      Lost in a haunted wood,
                                      Children afraid of the night
                                      Who have never been happy or good.
                                      
                                      The windiest militant trash
                                      Important Persons shout
                                      Is not so crude as our wish:
                                      What mad Nijinsky wrote
                                      About Diaghilev
                                      Is true of the normal heart;
                                      For the error bred in the bone
                                      Of each woman and each man
                                      Craves what it cannot have,
                                      Not universal love
                                      But to be loved alone.
                                      
                                      From the conservative dark
                                      Into the ethical life
                                      The dense commuters come,
                                      Repeating their morning vow;
                                      "I will be true to the wife,
                                      I'll concentrate more on my work,"
                                      And helpless governors wake
                                      To resume their compulsory game:
                                      Who can release them now,
                                      Who can reach the deaf,
                                      Who can speak for the dumb?
                                      
                                      All I have is a voice
                                      To undo the folded lie,
                                      The romantic lie in the brain
                                      Of the sensual man-in-the-street
                                      And the lie of Authority
                                      Whose buildings grope the sky:
                                      There is no such thing as the State
                                      And no one exists alone;
                                      Hunger allows no choice
                                      To the citizen or the police;
                                      We must love one another or die.
                                      
                                      Defenceless under the night
                                      Our world in stupor lies;
                                      Yet, dotted everywhere,
                                      Ironic points of light
                                      Flash out wherever the Just
                                      Exchange their messages:
                                      May I, composed like them
                                      Of Eros and of dust,
                                      Beleaguered by the same
                                      Negation and despair,
                                      Show an affirming flame.