1 Who stands, the crux left of the watershed, On the wet road between the chafing grass Below him sees dismantled washing-floors, Snatches of tramline running to the wood, An industry already comatose, Yet sparsely living. A ramshackle engine At Cashwell raises water; for ten years It lay in flooded workings until this, Its latter office, grudgingly performed, And further here and there, though many dead Lie under the poor soil, some acts are chosen Taken from recent winters; two there were Cleaned out a damaged shaft by hand, clutching The winch the gale would tear them from; one died During a storm, the fells impassable, Not at his village, but in wooden shape Through long abandoned levels nosed his way And in his final valley went to ground. Go home, now, stranger, proud of your young stock, Stranger, turn back again, frustrate and vexed: This land, cut off, will not communicate, Be no accessory content to one Aimless for faces rather there than here. Beams from your car may cross a bedroom wall, They wake no sleeper; you may hear the wind Arriving driven from the ignorant sea To hurt itself on pane, on bark of elm Where sap unbaffled rises, being Spring; But seldom this. Near you, taller than grass, Ears poise before decision, scenting danger. August 1927 2 From the very first coming down Into a new valley with a frown Because of the sun and a lost way, You certainly remain: to-day I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard Travel across a sudden bird, Cry out against the storm, and found The year's arc a completed round And love's worn circuit re-begun, Endless with no dissenting turn. Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen The swallow on the tile, Spring's green Preliminary shiver, passed A solitary truck, the last Of shunting in the Autumn. But now To interrupt the homely brow, Thought warmed to evening through and through Your letter comes, speaking as you, Speaking of much but not to come. Nor speech is close nor fingers numb, If love not seldom has received An unjust answer, was deceived. I, decent with the seasons, move Different or with a different love, Nor question overmuch the nod, The stone smile of this country god That never was more reticent, Always afraid to say more than it meant. December 1927 3 Control of the passes was, he saw, the key To this new district, but who would get it? He, the trained spy, had walked into the trap For a bogus guide, seduced with the old tricks. At Greenhearth was a fine site for a dam And easy power, had they pushed the rail Some stations nearer. They ignored his wires. The bridges were unbuilt and trouble coming. The street music seemed gracious now to one For weeks up in the desert. Woken by water Running away in the dark, he often had Reproached the night for a companion Dreamed of already. They would shoot, of course, Parting easily who were never joined. January 1928 4 Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings, Walking together in the windless orchard Where the brook runs over the gravel, far from the glacier. Again in the room with the sofa hiding the grate, Look down to the river when the rain is over, See him turn to the window, hearing our last Of Captain Ferguson. It is seen how excellent hands have turned to commonness. One staring too long, went blind in a tower, One sold all his manors to fight, broke through, and faltered. Nights come bringing the snow, and the dead howl Under the headlands in their windy dwelling Because the Adversary put too easy questions On lonely roads. But happy now, though no nearer each other, We see the farms lighted all along the valley; Down at the mill-shed the hammering stops And men go home. Noises at dawn will bring Freedom for some, but not this peace No bird can contradict: passing, but is sufficient now For something fulfilled this hour, loved or endured. March 1928 5 Watch any day his nonchalant pauses, see His dextrous handling of a wrap as he Steps after into cars, the beggar's envy. "There is a free one," many say, but err. He is not that returning conqueror, Nor ever the poles' circumnavigator. But poised between shocking falls on razor-edge Has taught himself this balancing subterfuge Of the accosting profile, the erect carriage. The song, the varied action of the blood Would drown the warning from the iron wood Would cancel the inertia of the buried: Travelling by daylight on from house to house The longest way to the intrinsic peace, With love's fidelity and with love's weakness. March 1929 6 Will you turn a deaf ear To what they said on the shore, Interrogate their poises In their rich houses; Of stork-legged heaven-reachers Of the compulsory touchers The sensitive amusers And masked amazers? Yet wear no ruffian badge Nor lie behind the hedge Waiting with bombs of conspiracy In arm-pit secrecy; Carry no talisman For germ or the abrupt pain Needing no concrete shelter Nor porcelain filter. Will you wheel death anywhere In his invalid chair, With no affectionate instant But his attendant? For to be held for friend By an undeveloped mind To be joke for children is Death's happiness: Whose anecdotes betray His favourite colour as blue Colour of distant bells And boys' overalls. His tales of the bad lands Disturb the sewing hands; Hard to be superior On parting nausea; To accept the cushions from Women against martyrdom, Yet applauding the circuits Of racing cyclists. Never to make signs Fear neither maelstrom nor zones Salute with soldiers' wives When the flag waves; Remembering there is No recognised gift for this; No income, no bounty, No promised country. But to see brave sent home Hermetically sealed with shame And cold's victorious wrestle With molten metal. A neutralising peace And an average disgrace Are honour to discover For later other. September 1929 7 Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all But will his negative inversion, be prodigal: Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch Curing the intolerable neural itch, The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy, And the distortions of ingrown virginity. Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response And gradually correct the coward's stance; Cover in time with beams those in retreat That, spotted, they turn though the reverse were great; Publish each healer that in city lives Or country houses at the end of drives; Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart. October 1929 8 I It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens Hearing the frogs exhaling from the pond, Watching traffic of magnificent cloud Moving without anxiety on open sky-- Season when lovers and writers find An altering speech for altering things, An emphasis on new names, on the arm A fresh hand with fresh power. But thinking so I came at once Where solitary man sat weeping on a bench, Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted Helpless and ugly as an embryo chicken. So I remember all of those whose death Is necessary condition of the season's setting forth, Who sorry in this time look only back To Christmas intimacy, a winter dialogue Fading in silence, leaving them in tears. And recent particulars come to mind: The death by cancer of a once hated master, A friend's analysis of his own failure, Listened to at intervals throughout the winter At different hours and in different rooms. But always with success of others for comparison, The happiness, for instance, of my friend Kurt Groote, Absence of fear in Gerhart Meyer From the sea, the truly strong man. A 'bus ran home then, on the public ground Lay fallen bicycles like huddled corpses: No chattering valves of laughter emphasised Nor the swept gown ends of a gesture stirred The sessile hush; until a sudden shower Fell willing into grass and closed the day, Making choice seem a necessary error. April 1929 II Coming out of me living is always thinking, Thinking changing and changing living, Am feeling as it was seeing-- In city leaning on harbour parapet To watch a colony of duck below Sit, preen, and doze on buttresses Or upright paddle on flickering stream, Casually fishing at a passing straw. Those find sun's luxury enough, Shadow know not of homesick foreigner Nor restlessness of intercepted growth. All this time was anxiety at night, Shooting and barricade in street. Walking home late I listened to a friend Talking excitedly of final war Of proletariat against police-- That one shot girl of nineteen through the knees, They threw that one down concrete stair-- Till I was angry, said I was pleased. Time passes in Hessen, in Gutensberg, With hill-top and evening holds me up, Tiny observer of enormous world. Smoke rises from factory in field, Memory of fire: On all sides heard Vanishing music of isolated larks: From village square voices in hymn, Men's voices, an old use. And I above standing, saying in thinking: "Is first baby, warm in mother, Before born and is still mother, Time passes and now is other, Is knowledge in him now of other, Cries in cold air, himself no friend. In grown man also, may see in face In his day-thinking and in his night-thinking Is wareness and is fear of other, Alone in flesh, himself no friend. "He say 'We must forgive and forget,' Forgetting saying but is unforgiving And unforgiving is in his living; Body reminds in him to loving, Reminds but takes no further part, Perfunctorily affectionate in hired room But takes no part and is unloving But loving death. May see in dead, In face of dead that loving wish, As one returns from Africa to wife And his ancestral property in Wales." Yet sometimes man look and say good At strict beauty of locomotive, Completeness of gesture or unclouded eye; In me so absolute unity of evening And field and distance was in me for peace, Was over me in feeling without forgetting Those ducks' indifference, that friend's hysteria, Without wishing and with forgiving, To love my life, not as other, Not as bird's life, not as child's, "Cannot," I said, "being no child now nor a bird." May 1929 III Order to stewards and the study of time, Correct in books, was earlier than this But joined this by the wires I watched from train, Slackening of wire and posts' sharp reprimand, In month of August to a cottage coming. Being alone, the frightened soul Returns to this life of sheep and hay No longer his: he every hour Moves further from this and must so move, As child is weaned from his mother and leaves home But taking the first steps falters, is vexed, Happy only to find home, a place Where no tax is levied for being there. So, insecure, he loves and love Is insecure, gives less than he expects. He knows not if it be seed in time to display Luxuriantly in a wonderful fructification Or whether it be but a degenerate remnant Of something immense in the past but now Surviving only as the infectiousness of disease Or in the malicious caricature of drunkenness; Its end glossed over by the careless but known long To finer perception of the mad and ill. Moving along the track which is himself, He loves what he hopes will last, which gone, Begins the difficult work of mourning, And as foreign settlers to strange country come, By mispronunciation of native words And by intermarriage create a new race And a new language, so may the soul Be weaned at last to independent delight. Startled by the violent laugh of a jay I went from wood, from crunch underfoot, Air between stems as under water; As I shall leave the summer, see autumn come Focusing stars more sharply in the sky, See frozen buzzard flipped down the weir And carried out to sea, leave autumn, See winter, winter for earth and us, A forethought of death that we may find ourselves at death Not helplessly strange to the new conditions. August 1929 IV It is time for the destruction of error. The chairs are being brought in from the garden, The summer talk stopped on that savage coast Before the storms, after the guests and birds: In sanatoriums they laugh less and less, Less certain of cure; and the loud madman Sinks now into a more terrible calm. The falling leaves know it, the children, At play on the fuming alkali-tip Or by the flooded football ground, know it-- This is the dragon's day, the devourer's: Orders are given to the enemy for a time With underground proliferation of mould, With constant whisper and the casual question, To haunt the poisoned in his shunned house, To destroy the efflorescence of the flesh, To censor the play of the mind, to enforce Conformity with the orthodox bone, With organised fear, the articulated skeleton. You whom I gladly walk with, touch, Or wait for as one certain of good, We know it, we know that love Needs more than the admiring excitement of union, More than the abrupt self-confident farewell, The heel on the finishing blade of grass, The self-confidence of the falling root, Needs death, death of the grain, our death. Death of the old gang; would leave them In sullen valley where is made no friend, The old gang to be forgotten in the spring, The hard bitch and the riding-master, Stiff underground; deep in clear lake The lolling bridegroom, beautiful, there. October 1929 9 Since you are going to begin to-day Let us consider what it is you do. You are the one whose part it is to lean, For whom it is not good to be alone. Laugh warmly turning shyly in the hall Or climb with bare knees the volcanic hill, Acquire that flick of wrist and after strain Relax in your darling's arms like a stone Remembering everything you can confess, Making the most of firelight, of hours of fuss; But joy is mine not yours--to have come so far, Whose cleverest invention was lately fur; Lizards my best once who took years to breed, Could not control the temperature of blood. To reach that shape for your face to assume, Pleasure to many and despair to some, I shifted ranges, lived epochs handicapped By climate, wars, or what the young men kept, Modified theories on the types of dross, Altered desire and history of dress. You in the town now call the exile fool That writes home once a year as last leaves fall, Think--Romans had a language in their day And ordered roads with it, but it had to die: Your culture can but leave--forgot as sure As place-name origins in favourite shire-- Jottings for stories, some often-mentioned Jack, And references in letters to a private joke, Equipment rusting in unweeded lanes, Virtues still advertised on local lines; And your conviction shall help none to fly, Cause rather a perversion on next floor. Excerpted from Selected Poems by W. H. Auden All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
