Poems

 

Aeroplanes

Do you roar to remind

Of what we know is there-

The threat now loud behind

Our singing summer air?

Do you fly low to warn

Of what will darken soon

Above our homes forlorn

The Sun, the stars, the moon?-

Of what man-thought has made-

The wheels of loveless might

That never now are stayed,

keep turning, day and night

   - Elizabeth Daryush; The Last Man

 

Sonnet to a Windsock

Brave canvas on a thousand breezes borne,

Now on some scrapheap destined to be thrown,

By bullets riddled, and bomb splinters torn,

These fateful months you faithfully have flown.

For bloodshot eyes within the circuit flying,

The wind’s own eye precisely you have found;-

Young men- and some are hurt and some are dying,-

At ninety knots they glide from air to ground.

Towards you my vizored friends, with one last glance,

Unleashed their Merlins-took off into cloud,

James fell in flames and Christopher in France,

For Peter and for Simon sea was shroud.

Shall ‘ danger-money’ workmen end your year?

‘Give it me please’! Young voices fill my ear.

-         W.D.O’Hanlon; Chaplain at Biggin Hill, 1940

The Wright Biplane

This biplane is the shape of human flight

Its name might better be First Motor kite.

Its maker’s name- Time cannot get that wrong,

For it was writ in heaven doubly Wright.

-         Robert Frost, ‘A further Range’

The Scout Fighter

He, the perfect pilot, knows

The life of every wind that blows

Along the aerial street.

He, High Heaven’s arch athlete,

Trembles on the perilous keys

Of Death’s unmortal ecstasies,

Weaving out of rushing fears

The stable rhythm of the spheres.

       -F.V.Branford -Titans and Gods

Air Crash

What happened in those moments, those short few

Seconds, that seemed to each so timeless – long,

(Eternity had touched them) when they knew-

The modish, prosperous passengers, the strong

Young unreflective pilot, crew – that here,

Fronting them, barring unescapably

Their road to life, was the all conqueror-

That they together faced what none could flee?----

Each one his own slow words, his acts delayed

(That were in truth so hurried) heard and saw,

Powerless-some other being its soul obeyed,

Some stranger published loudly his life-law---

Each had but one companion-knew,alone,

Himself, that till this hour he had not known.

-         Elizabeth Daryush – The Last Man

The Aeroplane

Timid and bright as the crescent adventuring forth

From rainy eclipse,

Tentative yet as a bird spring-released from the North

From the hangar she slips.

Pauses with hesitant grace, a shy dancing slave

Called by her lord,

Sky-drawn, advances resistless, a moon summoned wave,

A crusader’s sword.

Over the aerodrome, taxis, somnambulist, swings

Her head to the light,

Suddenly rises, awake, with the sun on her wings

Stilly in flight.

Mounting, accelerates, leaps, an ethereal doe,

Her nose to the wind,

Silver fleet, leaps through the cloud-hounds of thunder and snow,

Leaves them behind.

Slewing at last in blue air with an antelope grace,

The cloud-chase outrun,

Shying aslant on the hillside of infinite space,

She banks from the sun.

Will of the aeronaut, tautened life-tremulous wire

Lyre-strung to death,

Thrills through her framework the windy Daedalian fire,

The sun-passioned breath.

All her sleek fuselage, flaunting the speed-fluent curve

Peril inwrought

All her tense quickening of dauntless steel sinew and nerve

Answers his thought.

Sun-crowned he rests dream-fused with the joyous control,

Sky-set-apart

And the engine vibrates to the throb of man’s aspirant soul

Beats with his heart.

Upward she climbs again-flattens on shadowy breast,

Dwindles – a swan

Rhyming the sun-track serene, in full flight for the West

She gleams and is gone.

-         Michael Scot     

The Airman’s Toast

“Here’s to me in my sober mood

When I ramble, sit and think

Here’s to me in my drunken mood

When I gamble, sin and drink

And when from this world I pass

I hope they bury me upside down-

So the world can kiss my ass”