W. S. Graham is, with George Barker, the great survivor from the submerged "apocalyptic" generation. It's strange to think now that the "New Apocalypse" formed a considerable school in its own day, albeit disunited and leaderless (Dylan Thomas, its spiritual father, never really acknowledged its existence.) As early as 1940, almost at birth, it melted away into literary history; although heavy deposits of the apocalyptic style were to be seen in several of the smaller literary journals up to the early 1950s, and it's intriguing to remember that Harold Pinter began not as a playwright but as an apocalyptic poet influenced by [Graham, whose Collected Poems 1942–1977 was recently published]. Almost any early Graham poem will provide a sample of the style; but with a difference, even then:

    Near farms and property of bright night-time
    By mileaway dogbark how there is means to say
    What unseen bargain makes heavier where...