Стихи и эссе - Уистан Оден

1969

River Profile

Our body is a moulded river

NOVALIS

     Out of a bellicose fore-time, thundering     head-on collisions of cloud and rock in an     up-thrust, crevasse-and-avalanche, troll country,     deadly to breathers,

     it whelms into our picture below the melt-line,     where tarns lie frore under frowning cirques, goat-bell,     wind-breaker, fishing-rod, miner's-lamp country,     already at ease with

     the mien and gestures that become its kindness,     in streams, still anonymous, still jumpable,     flows as it should through any declining country     in probing spirals.

     Soon of a size to be named and the cause of     dirty in-fighting among rival agencies,     down a steep stair, penstock-and-turbine country,     it plunges ram-stam,

     to foam through a wriggling gorge incised in softer     strata, hemmed between crags that nauntle heaven,     robber-baron, tow-rope, portage-way country,     nightmare of merchants.

     Disemboguing from foothills, now in hushed meanders,     now in riffling braids, it vaunts across a senile     plain, well-entered, chateau-and-cider-press country,     its regal progress

     gallanted for a while by quibbling poplars,     then by chimneys: led off to cool and launder     retort, steam-hammer, gasometer country,     it changes color.

     Polluted, bridged by girders, banked by concrete,     now it bisects a polyglot metropolis,     ticker-tape, taxi, brothel, foot-lights country,     à-la-mode always.

     Broadening or burrowing to the moon's phases,     turbid with pulverised wastemantle, on through     flatter, duller, hotter, cotton-gin country     it scours, approaching

     the tidal mark where it puts off majesty,     disintegrates, and through swamps of a delta,     punting-pole, fowling-piece, oyster-tongs country,     wearies to its final

     act of surrender, effacement, atonement     in a huge amorphous aggregate no cuddled     attractive child ever dreams of, non-country,     image of death as

     a spherical dew-drop of life. Unlovely     monsters, our tales believe, can be translated     too, even as water, the selfless mother     of all especials.

1966

A New Year Greeting

After an article by Mary J. Marples

in Scientific American, January, 1969

     On this day tradition allots        to taking stock of our lives,     my greetings to all of you, Yeasts,        Bacteria, Viruses,     Aerobics and Anaerobics:        A Very Happy New Year     to all for whom my ectoderm        is as Middle-Earth to me.

     For creatures your size I offer        a free choice of habitat,     so settle yourselves in the zone        that suits you best, in the pools     of my pores or the tropical        forests of arm-pit and crotch,     in the deserts of my fore-arms,        or the cool woods of my scalp.

     Build colonies: I will supply        adequate warmth and moisture,     the sebum and lipids you need,        on condition you never     do me annoy with your presence,        but behave as good guests should,     not rioting into acne        or athlete's-foot or a boil.

     Does my inner weather affect        the surfaces where you live?     Do unpredictable changes        record my rocketing plunge     from fairs when the mind is in tift        and relevant thoughts occur     to fouls when nothing will happen        and no one calls and it rains.

     I should like to think that I make        a not impossible world,     but an Eden it cannot be:        my games, my purposive acts,     may turn to catastrophes there.        If you were religious folk,     how would your dramas justify        unmerited suffering?

     By what myths would your priests account        for the hurricanes that come     twice every twenty-four hours,        each time I dress or undress,     when, clinging to keratin rafts,        whole cities are swept away     to perish in space, or the Flood        that scalds to death when I bathe?

     Then, sooner or later, will dawn        a Day of Apocalypse,     when my mantle suddenly turns        too cold, too rancid, for you,     appetising to predators        of a fiercer sort, and I     am stripped of excuse and nimbus,        a Past, subject to Judgement.

1969

"About suffering they were never wrong,"

About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters; how well, they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or justwalking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and thetorturer's horseScratches its innocent behind on a tree.In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: howeverything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughmanmayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; thesun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing intothe greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that musthave seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

ARCHAEOLOGY

     The archaeologist's spade     delves into dwellings     vacancied long ago,

     unearthing evidence     of life-ways no one     would dream of leading now,

     concerning which he has not much     to say that he can prove:     the lucky man!

     Knowledge may have its purposes,     but guessing is always     more fun than knowing.

     We do know that Man,     from fear or affection,     has always graved His dead.

     What disastered a city,     volcanic effusion,     fluvial outrage,

     or a human horde,     agog for slaves and glory,     is visually patent,

     and we're pretty sure that,     as soon as palaces were built,     their rulers

     though gluttoned on sex     and blanded by flattery,     must often have yawned.

     But do grain-pits signify     a year of famine?     Where a coin-series

     peters out, should we infer     some major catastrophe?     Maybe. Maybe.

     From murals and statues     we get a glimpse of what     the Old Ones bowed down to,

     but cannot conceit     in what situations they blushed     or shrugged their shoulders.

     Poets have learned us their myths,     but just how did They take them?     That's a stumper.

     When Norsemen heard thunder,     did they seriously believe     Thor was hammering?

     No, I'd say: I'd swear     that men have always lounged in myths     as Tall Stories,

     that their real earnest     has been to grant excuses     for ritual actions.

     Only in rites     can we renounce our oddities     and be truly entired.

     Not that all rites     should be equally fonded:     some are abominable.

     There's nothing the Crucified     would like less     than butchery to appease Him.

ROMAN WALL BLUES

     Over the heather the wet wind blows,     I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

     The rain comes pattering out of the sky,     I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

     The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,     My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

     Aulus goes hanging around her place,     I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

     Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;     There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

     She gave me a ring but I diced it away;     I want my girl and I want my pay.

     When I'm a veteran with only one eye     I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

October 1937

EPITAPH ON A TYRANT

     Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,     And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;     He knew human folly like the back of his hand,     And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;     When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,     And when he cried the little children died in the streets.[137]

January 1939

REFUGEE BLUES

     Say this city has ten million souls,     Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:     Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

     Once we had a country and we thought it fair,     Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:     We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

     In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,     Every spring it blossoms anew:     Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

     The consul banged the table and said,     "If you've got no passport you're officially dead":     But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

     Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;     Asked me politely to return next year:     But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

     Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;     "If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":     He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

     Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;     It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":     O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

     Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,     Saw a door opened and a cat let in:     But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

     Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,     Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:     Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

     Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;     They had no politicians and sang at their ease:     They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

     Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,     A thousand windows and a thousand doors:     Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

     Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;     Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:     Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

March 1939