Стихи и эссе - Уистан Оден

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

The Common Life

(for Chester Kallman)

     A living-room, the catholic area you     (Thou, rather) and I may enter     without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts     each visitor with a style,

     a secular faith: he compares its dogmas     with his, and decides whether     he would like to see more of us. (Spotless rooms     where nothing's left lying about

     chill me, so do cups used for ash-trays or smeared     with lip-stick: the homes I warm to,     though seldom wealthy, always convey a feeling     of bills being promptly settled

     with cheques that don't bounce.) There's no We at an instant,     only Thou and I, two regions     of protestant being which nowhere overlap:     a room is too small, therefore,

     if its occupants cannot forget at will     that they are not alone, too big     if it gives them any excuse in a quarrel     for raising their voices. What,

     quizzing ours, would Sherlock Holmes infer? Plainly,     ours is a sitting culture     in a generation which prefers comfort     (or is forced to prefer it)

     to command, would rather incline its buttocks     on a well-upholstered chair     than the burly back of a slave: a quick glance     at book-titles would tell him

     that we belong to the clerisy and spend much     on our food. But could he read     what our prayers and jokes are about, what creatures     frighten us most, or what names

     head our roll-call of persons we would least like     to go to bed with? What draws     singular lives together in the first place,     loneliness, lust, ambition,

     or mere convenience, is obvious, why they drop     or murder one another     clear enough: how they create, though, a common world     between them, like Bombelli's

     impossible yet useful numbers, no one     has yet explained. Still, they do     manage to forgive impossible behavior,     to endure by some miracle

     conversational tics and larval habits     without wincing (were you to die,     I should miss yours). It's a wonder that neither     has been butchered by accident,

     or, as lots have, silently vanished into     History's criminal noise     unmourned for, but that, after twenty-four years,     we should sit here in Austria

     as cater-cousins, under the glassy look     of a Naples Bambino,     the portrayed regards of Strauss and Stravinsky,     doing British cross-word puzzles,

     is very odd indeed. I'm glad the builder gave     our common-room small windows     through which no observed outsider can observe us:     every home should be a fortress,

     equipped with all the very latest engines     for keeping Nature at bay,     versed in all ancient magic, the arts of quelling     the Dark Lord and his hungry

     animivorous chimaeras. (Any brute     can buy a machine in a shop,     but the sacred spells are secret to the kind,     and if power is what we wish

     they won't work.) The ogre will come in any case:     so Joyce has warned us. Howbeit,     fasting or feasting, we both know this: without     the Spirit we die, but life

     without the Letter is in the worst of taste,     and always, though truth and love     can never really differ, when they seem to,     the subaltern should be truth.

1963

August 1968

        The Ogre does what ogres can,        Deeds quite impossible for Man,        But one prize is beyond his reach,        The Ogre cannot master Speech.        About a subjugated plain,        Among its desperate and slain,        The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,        While drivel gushes from his lips.

* 1968 *

Moon Landing

     It's natural the Boys should whoop it up for     so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure        it would not have occurred to women        to think worth while, made possible only

     because we like huddling in gangs and knowing     the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness        hurrah the deed, although the motives        that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich.

     A grand gesture. But what does it period?     What does it osse? We were always adroiter        with objects than lives, and more facile        at courage than kindness: from the moment

     the first flint was flaked this landing was merely     a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam's,        still don't fit us exactly, modern        only in this-our lack of decorum.

     Homer's heroes were certainly no braver     than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector        was excused the insult of having        his valor covered by television.

     Worth going to see? I can well believe it.     Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert        and was not charmed: give me a watered        lively garden, remote from blatherers

     about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where     on August mornings I can count the morning        glories where to die has a meaning,        and no engine can shift my perspective.

     Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens     as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at,        Her Old Man, made of grit not protein,        still visits my Austrian several

     with His old detachment, and the old warnings     still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to        an ugly finish, Irreverence        is a greater oaf than Superstition.

     Our apparatniks will continue making     the usual squalid mess called History:        all we can pray for is that artists,        chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it.

1969