Malade - Free Audiobook

WEEK-NIGHT SERVICE

THE five old bells
     Are hurrying and eagerly calling,
     Imploring, protesting
     They know, but clamorously falling
     Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
     Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket
         dropping
     In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

     The silver moon
     That somebody has spun so high
     To settle the question, yes or no, has caught
     In the net of the night's balloon,
     And sits with a smooth bland smile up there in
         the sky
     Smiling at naught,
     Unless the winking star that keeps her company
     Makes little jests at the bells' insanity,
     As if he knew aught!

     The patient Night
     Sits indifferent, hugged in her rags,
     She neither knows nor cares
     Why the old church sobs and brags;
     The light distresses her eyes, and tears
     Her old blue cloak, as she crouches and covers her
         face,
     Smiling, perhaps, if we knew it, at the bells' loud
         clattering disgrace.

     The wise old trees
     Drop their leaves with a faint, sharp hiss of contempt,
     While a car at the end of the street goes by with a
         laugh;
     As by degrees
     The poor bells cease, and the Night is exempt,
     And the stars can chaff
     The ironic moon at their ease, while the dim old
         church
     Is peopled with shadows and sounds and ghosts that
         lurch
     In its cenotaph.