Time’s terror of air’s and light’s lack
Black
And the slimy litheness of a snake.
Then he was swirled into the sea.
But that was all balls and talk
Nowadays we have changed all that
Into a cleaner light to walk
And wipe that mire off on the mat.
So when I knew his end was near
My breath was freer
Aerating a shedding then
Of all the accidents of birth,
And I had a better right to the earth
And knew myself more of a man,
Peeling the last squamour of the old skin.
But never underestimate
The comic cunning of the dead.
The snake that slithers in at night
To occupy most of the bed
Has learnt to wear my father’s head.
And one day in the filthy shop
Of ancient rubbish I wound up
A 1914 gramophone
To a parrot voice intone
Some nonsense about sun and air,
The two things that were lacking there.
And, like a fetal marmoset,
Something is swinging when I fix
Eyes upon eyes in the bathroom glass
A load of stupid monkey tricks
Turns me to him as the months pass:
Hair, eyes, jowl, teeth.
I hear him mine the floor beneath
Muffled: You’ll not be rid of me.
Each morning when you shave you’ll see.
‘THEY FEAR AND HATE’
They fear and hate
the Donne and Dante in him, this
cold
gift to turn heat to a flame, a kiss
to the gate
of a monster’s
labyrinth. They hold
and anchor a thin thread
the tennis party, the parish dance:
stale pus out of dead
pores.
‘SO WILL THE FLOW OF TIME AND FIRE’
So will the flux of time and fire,
The process and the pain, expire,
And history can bow
To one eternal now.
The greenstick snaps, the slender goldenrod
Here cannot probe or enter. Thin spring winds
Freeze blue lovers in unprotected hollows, but
Summer chimes heavy bells and flesh is fed
Where fruit bursts, the ground is crawling with berries.
SEPTEMBER, 1938
There arose those winning life between two wars,
Born out of one, doomed food for the other,
Floodroars ever in the ears.
Slothlovers hardly, hardly fighters:
Resentment spent against stone, long beaten out of
Minds resigned to the new:
Useless to queue for respirators.
Besides, what worse chaos to come back to.
Home, limbs heavy with mud and work, to sleep
To sweep out a house days deep in dirt.
Knowing finally man would limbs loin face
Efface utterly, leaving in his place
Engines rusting to world’s end, heirs to warfare
Fonctionnant d’une maniere automatique.
SUMMER, 1940
Summer swamps the land, the sun imprisons us,
The pen slithers in the examinee’s fingers,
And colliding lips of lovers slide on sweat
When, blind, they inherit their tactile world.
Spectacles mist, handveins show blue, the urge to undress
Breeds passion in unexpected places. Barrage balloons
Soar silver in silver ether. Lying on grass,
We watch them, docile monsters, unwind to the zenith.
Drops of that flood out of France, with mud and work
Stained, loll in the trams, drinking their cigarettes,
Their presence defiling the flannels and summer frocks,
The hunters to hound out safely, spoil the summer.
SPRING IN CAMP, 1941
War becomes time, and long logic
On buried premises; spring supervenes
With the circle as badge which, pun and profundity,
Vast, appears line and logical,
But, small, shows travel returning.
Circle is circle, proves nothing, makes nothing,
Brings new picture of old time.
Here in barracks is intake of birds,
The sun holds early his ordered room,
The pale company clerk is uneasy
As spring brings odour of other springs.
The truckdriver sings, free of the war,
The load of winter and war becomes
Embarrassing as a younger self.
Words disintegrate; war is words.
THE EXCURSION
The blue of summer morning begs
The country journey to be made,
The sun that gilds the breakfast eggs
Illuminates the marmalade.
A check is smiling on the desk.
Remembered smells upon the lane
Breed hunger for the picaresque
To blood the buried springs again.
Here is the pub and here the church
And there our thirty miles of sun,
The river and the rod and the perch,
The noonday drinking just begun.
Let beer beneath the neighbour trees
Swill all that afternoon away,
And onions, crisp to sullen cheese,
Yield the sharp succulence of today.
Today remembers breaking out
The fire that burned the hayfield black.
An army that was grey with drought
Shows to my stick its fossil track.
Returning evening rose on rose
Of pomegranate rouge and ripe;
The lamp upon the pavement throws
The ectoplasm of my pipe.
EDEN
History was not just what you learned that scorching day
Of ink and wood and sweat in the classroom, when mention
Of the Duke of Burgundy lost you in voluptuous dream
Of thirst and Christmas, but that day was part of history.
There were other times, misunderstood by the family,
When you, at fifteen, on your summer evening bed
Believed there were ancient towns you might anciently visit.
There might be a neglected platform on some terminus
And a ticket bought when the clock was off its guard.
Oh, who can dismember the past? The boy on the friendly bed
Lay on the unpossessed mother, the bosom of history,
And is gathered to her at last. And tears I suppose
Still thirst for that reeking unwashed pillow,
That bed ingrained with all the dirt of the past,
The mess and lice and stupidity of the Golden Age,
But a mother and loving, ultimate Eden.
One looks for Eden in history, best left unvisited,
For the primal sin is always a present sin,
The thin hand held in the river which can never
Clean off the blood, and so remains bloodless.
And this very moment, this very word will be Eden,
As that boy was already, or is already, in Eden,
While the delicate filthy hand dabbles and dabbles
But leaves the river clean, heartbreakingly clean.
‘AND AS THE MANHATTAN DAWN CAME UP’
And as the Manhattan dawn came up
Over the skyline we still lay
In each other’s arms. Then you
Came awake and the Manhattan dawn
Was binocularly presented in your
Blue eyes and in your pink nipples
Monostomatic heaven…
‘THEN AS THE MOON EN
GILDS THE THALIAN FIELDS’
Then as the moon engilds the Thalian fields
The nymph her knotted maidenhead thus yields,
In joy the howlets owl it to the night,
In joy fair Cynthia augments her light,
The bubbling conies in their warrens move
And simulate the transports of their love.
‘SO THE WORLD TICKS, AYE, LIKE A TICKING CLOCK’
So the world ticks, aye, like to a ticking clock
On th’ wall of naked else infinitude,
Am I am hither come to lend an ear
To manners, modes and bawdries of this town
In hope to school myself in knavery.
Aye, ‘tis a knavish world wherein the whore
And bawd and pickpurse, he of the quartertrey,
The coneycatcher, prigger, jack ‘o the trumps
Do profit mightily while the studious lamp
Affords but little glimmer to the starved
And studious partisan of learning’s lore.
There, I say, am I come hither, eye,
To be enrolled in knavish roguery.
But soft, who’s this? Aye, marry, by my troth,
A subject apt for working on. Good den,
My master, prithee what o’clock has thou,
You I would say, and have not hast, forgive
Such rustical familiarity
From one unlearn’d in all the lore polite
Of streets, piazzas and the panoply
Of populous cities –
‘YOU WENT THAT WAY AS YOU ALWAYS SAID YOU WOULD’
You went that way as you always said you would,
Contending over the cheerful cups that good
Was in the here-and-now, in, in fact, the cheerful
Cups and not in some remotish sphere full
Of twangling saints, the pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die
Of Engels as much as angels, whereupon I…
‘THE WORK ENDS WHEN THE WORK ENDS’
The work ends when the work ends,
Not before, and rarely after.
And that explains, my foes and friends,
This spiteful burst of ribald laughter.
IN MEMORIAM WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN KMT
Let the stamps in the album,
Free of their mucilage,
Smile and mow in homage,
And the railway museum
Steam and clank and cry
At one who more than any
Palped the pulse of the age,
Finding the English mass
And the whole of the O. E. D.
Relevant to our need
Of a voice and ear that knew
The European mess
And fronted it with a creed
Shining as a machine.
China and Berlin,
Iceland and Brooklyn too
Danced with a lexis which
Johnson would have approved.
And above all the craft
Coaxed to a new cuisine
The language that he loved.
Is he a climate too?
The winds and the squalls are gone,
And the patches of metal sun,
Along with Wystan Hugh,
But Auden remains, remains,
A name as rounded as
A decent artifact
One can hold in the hand,
The joy of the maker’s act
Immanent in its round
And smooth irregular
Ultimate uselessness,
All art, said Wilde, being useless.
Wherever, Sir Wystan, you are,
Frown on our careless craft,
And pray for us, pray for us.
A CHRISTMAS RECIPE
Of shining silver crystal be your bowl,
Big as a priest’s paunch or a drunkard’s soul.
Take spongecakes then to fill it, very dry.
Divide them lengthwise, lengthwise let them lie,
Inner face upwards. Smear these faces then
With raspberry jam, then jam them shut again –
Dispose them in the bowl. Take Jerez wine
Or Mavrodaphne; liberally incline
The bottle till, like rain on earth sun-baked,
The liquor has not drenched but merely slaked
That spongy thirst. With milk and eggs well-beaten
Seethe up a custard, thick; with honey sweeten –
Then on your drunken spongecakes swiftly pour
Till they are sunk beneath a golden floor.
Cool until set. Whip cream and spread it deep.
Strew dragées in a silver swoop or sweep.
Cool, and keep cool. A two-hour wait must stifle
Your lust to eat this nothing, this mere TRIFLE.
LIMERICK: THE ANGLER OF KINSALE
An angler who lived at Kinsale
Encountered a bilingual whale;
He swore that it sounded
A Yank as it grounded,
But was, when caught, blowing a Gael.
‘I HAD NOT THOUGHT TO HEAR’
I had not thought to hear
A thrush in the heart of Ealing
Like a heart throbbing, unsealing
My waxed London ear.
‘THUS KNEELING AT THE ALTAR RAIL’
Thus kneeling at the altar rail
We ate the Word’s white papery wafer.
Here, so I thought, desire must fail,
My chastity be never safer.
But then I saw your tongue protrude
To catch the wisp of angel’s food.
Dear God! I reeled beneath the shock:
My Eton suit, your party frock,
Christmas, the dark, and postman’s knock!
‘DO YE THE SAVAGE OLD LAW DENY’
Do ye the savage old law deny.
Let me repay, in age or youth –
An infinitude of eyes for an eye,
An infinitude of teeth for a tooth.
‘THE KIND OF LAUGH THAT WODEHOUSE IMPARTS IS’
The kind of laugh that Wodehouse imparts is
Extremely popular with the Nazis.
On his covers let’s stamp (am I being too caustic?) a
Crumpet, an egg, a bean and a swastika.
‘A GLANCE OR GANDER OF THIS GANDY DANCER’
A glance or gander of this gandy dancer,
Ganef gannet of mind I mean,
Takes in seasky’s immensities,
Black wingtips hid, see crass beak pincer
Thoughtfish, gulp, in a wavewhite preen
On rock rests nor questions what rock is.
‘THE YOUNG THINGS WHO FREQUENT MOVIE PALACES’
The young things who frequent movie palaces
Know nothing of psychoanalysis.
But Herr Doktor Freud
Is not really annoyed.
Let them cling to their long-standing fallacies.
THE WIGGLE POOF
Sometimes, in winter, just for fun,
It flies round and disturbs
Poor youngsters who are trying hard
To swot up Latin verbs
The colour of the Wiggle Poof
Is green with purple spots.
It’s harmless as a chimpanzee:
I’m sure you’d love it lots.
‘A PRISM IS A USEFUL THING’
A prism is a useful thing:
Besides refracting light,
When tied on to a piece of string,
It’s useful in a fight.
Warmed in a sauce or chilled with ice,
It makes a splendid meal,
With prunes, asparagus or rice,
Or even candied peel.
‘I WROTE ON THE BEACH, WITH A STICK OF SALTY WOOD’
I wrote on the beach, with a stick of salty wood,
‘Our deeds are but as writings on the shore’,
Believing it: I never thought them more
Than prey for growling time: all ill, all good
Were friable a sand. There where I stood,
The wild wind whistled, driving all before,
And the inexorable waves, with a damped roar,
Strode on, like beasts that smell their living food.
So I forgot. But, ages older grown,
Revisiting, I caught that distant day.
The sands will stretched, without life and alone,
But one spot the waves had sheered away,
Fearful to touch it. There, as if on stone
Stark and clear-chiselled, that inscription lay.
‘CALM LIES OUR HARBOUR, WHILE THE MAIDEN DAY’
Calm lies our harbour, while the maiden day
Leans forth her arms to night and bids it go,
Smiling, and waits to wake with gentlest glow
Quayside and sea, and tall gaunt ships that sway.
I wait no longer now: wide lies the way,
Unsure, uncharted. Only this I know:
That sea has dubious currents, tides that flow
Frustrating all the havened ancients say…
‘FATHER OF FIRE, WITH BOLD SIMONY’
Father of fire who, with bold simony,
Didst steal the seed, catched high on Olympus
Now in my mind relive that felony
And lean down to my praying, piteous.
Be thou again as brave bounteous
As when thou first didn’t bring that art of heat
To nations bestial still and barbarous,
And fetch a match to light my cigarette.
‘J.B.W.’
J.B.W.,
Girls won’t trouble you
He’s the fella for Llewela
French without tears.
Or, All’s Llwell that Ends Llwell.
‘THE SEA, GREEN AND DEEP’
The sea, green and deep,
Seems like a beast asleep.
The beach and seaweed gleam,
And the sea breathes, heaves, sleepily,
In its deep green dream.
‘WINTER WINS’