William Plomer (1903 – 1973)
South African poet, novelist and campaigner for racial equality.
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Brzeska and Brooke were among those she knew
And she lived long enough to meet Lawrences, too,
D. H. and T. E. – she who'd known R. L. S.,
Talked to Hardy of Kim, and to Kipling of Tess!
The commonplace needs no defence,
Dullness is in the critic’s eyes,
Without a licence life evolves
From some dim phase its own surprise;
Under these yellow-twinkling elms,
Behind these hedges trimly shorn,
As in a stable once, so here
It may be born, it may be born.
Oh, the twenties and the thirties were not otherwise designed
Than other times when blind men into ditches led the blind,
When the rich mouse ate the cheese and the poor mouse got the rind,
And man, the self-destroyer, was not lucid in his mind.
When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin
She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:
An abstemious man would reel at her look
As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.
A family portrait not too stale to record
Of a pleasant old buffer, nephew to a lord,
Who believed that the bank was mightier than the sword,
And that an umbrella might pacify barbarians abroad:
Just like an old liberal
Between the wars.
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