Стихи и эссе - Уистан Оден

1946

A Walk After Dark

     A cloudless night like this     Can set the spirit soaring:     After a tiring day     The clockwork spectacle is     Impressive in a slightly boring     Eighteenth-century way.

     It soothed adolescence a lot     To meet so shameless a stare;     The things I did could not     Be so shocking as they said     If that would still be there     After the shocked were dead.

     Now, unready to die     But already at the stage     When one starts to resent the young,     I am glad those points in the sky     May also be counted among     The creatures of Middle-age.

     It's cosier thinking of night     As more an Old People's Home     Than a shed for a faultless machine,     That the red pre-Cambrian light     Is gone like Imperial Rome     Or myself at seventeen.

     Yet however much we may like     The stoic manner in which     The classical authors wrote,     Only the young and the rich     Have the nerve or the figure to strike     The lacrimae rerum note.

     For the present stalks abroad     Like the past and its wronged again     Whimper and are ignored,     And the truth cannot be hid;     Somebody chose their pain,     What needn't have happened did.

     Occurring this very night     By no established rule,     Some event may already have hurled     Its first little No at the right     Of the laws we accept to school     Our post-diluvian world:

     But the stars burn on overhead,     Unconscious of final ends,     As I walk home to bed,     Asking what judgement waits     My person, all my friends,     And these United States.

1948

The More Loving One

     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.

1957

The Shield of Achilles

     She looked over his shoulder     For vines and olive trees,     Marble well-governed cities     And ships upon untamed seas,     But there on the shining metal     His hands had put instead     An artificial wilderness     And a sky like lead.

     A plain without a feature, bare and brown,     No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,     Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,     Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood     An unintelligible multitude,     A million eyes, a million boots in line,     Without expression, waiting for a sign.

     Out of the air a voice without a face     Proved by statistics that some cause was just     In tones as dry and level as the place:     No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;     Column by column in a cloud of dust     They marched away enduring a belief     Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

     She looked over his shoulder     For ritual pieties,     White flower-garlanded heifers,     Libation and sacrifice,     But there on the shining metal     Where the altar should have been,     She saw by his flickering forge-light     Quite another scene.

     Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot     Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)     And sentries sweated for the day was hot:     A crowd of ordinary decent folk     Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke     As three pale figures were led forth and bound     To three posts driven upright in the ground.

     The mass and majesty of this world, all     That carries weight and always weighs, the same     Lay in the hands of others; they were small     And could not hope for help and no help came:     What their foes liked to do was done, their shame     Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride     And died as men before their bodies died.

     She looked over his shoulder     For athletes at their games,     Men and women in a dance     Moving their sweet limbs     Quick, quick, to music,     But there on the shining shield     His hands had set no dancing-floor     But a weed-choked field.

     A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,     Loitered about that vacancy; a bird     Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:     That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,     Were axioms to him, who'd never heard     Of any world where promises were kept,     Or one could weep because another wept.

     The thin-lipped armorer,     Hephaestos, hobbled away,     Thetis of the shining breasts     Cried out in dismay     At what the god had wrought     To please her son, the strong     Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles     Who would not live long.

1952

Friday's Child

(In memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945)

     He told us we were free to choose     But, children as we were, we thought-     "Paternal Love will only use     Force in the last resort

     On those too bumptious to repent."     Accustomed to religious dread,     It never crossed our minds He meant     Exactly what He said.

     Perhaps He frowns, perhaps He grieves,     But it seems idle to discuss     If anger or compassion leaves     The bigger bangs to us.

     What reverence is rightly paid     To a Divinity so odd     He lets the Adam whom He made     Perform the Acts of God?

     It might be jolly if we felt     Awe at this Universal Man     (When kings were local, people knelt);     Some try to, but who can?

     The self-observed observing Mind     We meet when we observe at all     Is not alariming or unkind     But utterly banal.

     Though instruments at Its command     Make wish and counterwish come true,     It clearly cannot understand     What It can clearly do.

     Since the analogies are rot     Our senses based belief upon,     We have no means of learning what     Is really going on,

     And must put up with having learned     All proofs or disproofs that we tender     Of His existence are returned     Unopened to the sender.

     Now, did He really break the seal     And rise again? We dare not say;     But conscious unbelievers feel     Quite sure of Judgement Day.

     Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,     As dead as we shall ever be,     Speaks of some total gain or loss,     And you and I are free

     To guess from the insulted face     Just what Appearances He saves     By suffering in a public place     A death reserved for slaves.

1958

Thanksgiving for a Habitat

     Nobody I know would like to be buried     with a silver cocktail-shaker,     a transistor radio and a strangled     daily help, or keep his word because

     of a great-great-grandmother who got laid     by a sacred beast. Only a press lord     could have built San Simeon: no unearned income     can buy us back the gait and gestures

     to manage a baroque staircase, or the art     of believing footmen don't hear     human speech. (In adulterine castles     our half-strong might hang their jackets

     while mending their lethal bicycle-chains:     luckily, there are not enough     crags to go round.) Still, Hetty Pegler's Tump     is worth a visit, so is Schönbrunn,

     to look at someone's idea of the body     that should have been his, as the flesh     Mum formulated shouldn't: that whatever     he does or feels in the mood for,

     stock-taking, horse-play, worship, making love,     he stays the same shape, disgraces     a Royal I. To be over-admired is not     good enough: although a fine figure

     is rare in either sex, others like it     have existed before. One may     be a Proustian snob or a sound Jacksonian     democrat, but which of us wants

     to be touched inadvertently, even     by his beloved? We know all about graphs     and Darwin, enormous rooms no longer     superhumanise, but earnest

     city-planners are mistaken: a pen     for a rational animal     is no fitting habitat for Adam's     sovereign clone. I, a transplant

     from overseas, at last am dominant     over three acres and a blooming     conurbation of country lives, few of whom     I shall ever meet, and with fewer

     converse. Linnaeus recoiled from the Amphibia     as a naked gruesome rabble,     Arachnids give me the shudders, but fools     who deface their emblem of guilt

     are germane to Hitler: the race of spiders     shall be allowed their webs. I should like     to be to my water-brethren as a spell     of fine weather: Many are stupid,

     and some, maybe, are heartless, but who is not     vulnerable, easy to scare,     and jealous of his privacy? (I am glad     the blackbird, for instance, cannot

     tell if I'm talking English, German or     just typewriting: that what he utters     I may enjoy as an alien rigmarole.) I ought     to outlast the limber dragonflies

     as the muscle-bound firs are certainly     going to outlast me: I shall not end     down any oesophagus, though I may succumb     to a filter-passing predator,

     shall, anyhow, stop eating, surrender my smidge     of nitrogen to the World Fund     with a drawn-out Oh (unless at the nod     of some jittery commander

     I be translated in a nano-second     to a c.c. of poisonous nothing     in a giga-death). Should conventional     blunderbuss war and its routiers

     invest my bailiwick, I shall of course     assume the submissive posture:     but men are not wolves and it probably     won't help. Territory, status,

     and love, sing all the birds, are what matter:     what I dared not hope or fight for     is, in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft     where I needn't, ever, be at home to

     those I am not at home with, not a cradle,     a magic Eden without clocks,     and not a windowless grave, but a place     I may go both in and out of.

1962