Jubilo (Allen Tate)

Jubilo

Allen Tate

To Arthur Mizener

Hit mus be now de Kingdom comin

And de year of Jubilo . . .

Tail-spinning from the shelves of sky

See how it dips and tacks and tosses

To cast a beam in the mind's eye:

Who will count the gains and losses

On the Day of Jubilo?

Public accountant with double entry

Enter in red war's final cast

In the black column the pacing sentry,

Old women picking the hogs' mast

For the Day of Jubilo

Lean to the crowded air and hear,

Eavesdropper, how it goes inside

Your own deaf and roaring ear:

Boys caress the machines they ride

On the Day of Jubilo

After the dry and sticking tongue

After our incivility

Who will inflate the poet's lung

Gone flat of this indignity

Till the Day of Jubilo?

Scholar, no dog will have your day

For all your capital's run out,

Wry baby in wet disarray-

Scholar, prepare your meagre clout

For the Day of Jubilo

Under the slip and slide of day

Think, at the end you'll never be

Trapped in a fox-hole of decay

Nor snip nor glide of history

After the Day of Jubilo

All our jubilant eyes are raised,

Jubilo. Over the barbican

On the great Day pure and dazed,

Empty of heart the empty man

Of the Day of Jubilo

Then for the Day of Jubilo

The patient bares his arm at dawn

To suck the blood's transfusing glow

And then when all the blood is gone

(For the Day of Jubilo)

Salt serum stays his arteries

Sly tide threading the ribs of sand,

Till his lost being dries, and cries

For that unspeakable salt land

Beyond the Day of Jubilo.

1943