 Poetry: April 03, 2013 Issue [#5600] |
  Poetry
This week: W. H. Auden Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
As I Walked Out One Evening
W. H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
On February 21, 1907 Doctor George Auden and his wife Constance Bicknell welcomed their third son Wystan Hugh Auden into the world. Auden was born in York, England. His father was a physician, his mother a nurse. Auden went to Christ Church College, which is part of the University of Oxford. There he study poetry and was influenced by great poets like William Blake, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson. Auden quickly formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. Following his graduation from college Auden spent five years as a schoolmaster in England and in Scotland.
Auden's first book, Poems, was self-published and took two years to get the reorganization Auden needed to established him as a respected poet. Auden’s adventurous nature took him on trips to Iceland and China which led to two more books, jointly written by Auden's college classmates. The first book, Letter from Iceland, was written with Louis MacNeice, and the second book, Journey to War, was written with Christopher Isherwood. Auden also served in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1935 Auden met and married Erika Mann, it has been said it was a marriage of convenience for Erika to get British papers to leave Germany. Four years later the Auden moved to the United States. He became a United States citizen in 1946. It was in that same year he met his lover Chester Kallman. Living in the United States changed Auden views greatly on socialism and Christianity. Auden was not only a poet but a noted playwright and editor. His works include Double Man, For the Times Being, Collected Poetry, The Shield of Achilles, Collected Longer Poems and The Age of Anxiety which won him the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He also wrote several opera librettos with his lover Chester Kallman. Auden spent a lot of his life traveling and writing and teaching.
In 1956 he became a professor of poetry at Oxford and he taught there for the next five years. His wife Erika Mann died on August 27 1969. He spent his later years living between New York and Austria. Over the years Auden won several poetry awards. He was also a "Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets" until he died in Vienna, of heart failure on September 29, 1973.
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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In pitch darkness, my soul lingers restlessly,
I vanish within your infinite sky.
Endless in your beauty,
As you accept me almost instantly.
I sleep here bare, motionless.
Just an empty land on this planet,
I try to reach you,
To feel those emblazon in cherry-red you display,
Sunset has reached the city of troy,
Bursting into life with such joy!
And here I am in my moments of solitude,
Nothing more than appalling dirt.
I can smell the violets blooming across the distant field,
But you are too far to experience this intoxicant moment.
I wonder if I can ever reach you,
Or even just feel you for a brief moment.
I attempt through the night,
I build a giant tower on this empty land,
And try to climb up to you.
But O darling, I fail again and again.
Like I did once before.
I have an old torch in my hand.
Using its divine light to find your hidden stars,
Knowing you have more than treasures to give.
Soon, the night silently welcomes the break of dawn,
The willow tree that grows in the depths of my soil
Whispers that now is the time.
I anticipate this moment the most,
Where we meet at the horizon once more,
An eternal bond of you and I.
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