Стихи и эссе - Уистан Оден

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

VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY

     Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.     An exile making watches glanced up as he passed     And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,     A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell     Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.     The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

     Far off in Paris where his enemies     Whispered that he was wicked, in an upright chair     A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,     "Nothing is better than life". But was it? Yes, the fight     Against the false and the unfair     Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilize.

     Cajoling, scolding, scheming, cleverest of them all,     He'd had the other children in a holy war     Against the unfamous grown-ups; and like a child, been sly     And humble, when there was occasion for     The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,     But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

     And never doubted, like D'Alembert, he would win:     Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest     Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,     And only himself to count upon.     Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;     Rousseau, he'd always known, would blubber and give in.

     Night fell and made him think of women: Lust     Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool,     How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed;     Pimpette had loved him too, like scandal; he was glad.     He'd done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule,     It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.

     Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,     Earthquakes and executions: Soon he would be dead,     And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses     Itching to boil their children. Only his verses     Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead,     The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.

February 1939

IF I COULD TELL YOU

Time will say nothing but I told you so,Time only knows the price we have to payIf I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put their show,If we should stumble when musicians play?Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,Because I love you more then I can say,If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,There must be reason why the leaves decay;Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,The vision seriously intends to stay;If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,And all the brooks and soldiers run away;Will time say nothing but I told you so?If I could tell you I would let you know.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

(Funeral Blues)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overheadScribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.For nothing now can ever come to any good.

1938

TRINCULO'S SONG

Mechanic, merchant, king,Are warmed by the cold clownWhose head is in the cloudsAnd never can get down.

Into a solitudeUndreamed of by their fatQuick dreams have lifted me;The north wind steals my hat.

On clear days I can seeGreen acres far below,And the red roof where IWas Little Trinculo.

There lies that solid worldThese hands can never reach;My history, my love,Is but a choice of speech.

A terror shakes my tree,A flock of words fly out,Whereat a laughter shakesThe busy and devout.

Wild images, come downOut of your freezing sky,That I, like shorter men,May get my joke and die.

From "Under Which Lyre"

In our morale must lie our strength:So, that we may behold at length    Routed Apollo'sBattalions melt away like fog,Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,     Which runs as follows: —

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,Thou shalt not write thy doctor' thesis    On education,Thou shalt not worship projects norShalt thou or thine bow down before     Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnairesOr quizzes upon World-Affairs,     Nor with complianceTake any test. Thou shalt not sitWith statisticians nor commit     A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly termsWith guys in advertising firms,     Nor speak with suchAs read the Bible for its prose,Nor, above all, make love to those     Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy meansNor on plain water and raw greens.                     If thou must chooseBetween the chances, choose the odd;Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

1946

THE QUEST

1. The Door

Out of it steps the future of the poor,Enigmas, executioners and rules,Her Majesty in a bad temper orThe red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools.

Great person eye it in the twilight forA past it might so carelessly let in,A widow with a missionary grin,The foaming inundation at a roar.

We pile our all against it when afraid,And beat upon its panels when we die:By happening to be open once, it made

Enormous Alice see a wonderlandThat waited for her in sunshine, and,Simply by being tiny, made her cry.

2. The Preparations

All had been ordered weeks before the startFrom the best firms at such work; instrumentsTo take the measure of all queer events,And drugs to move the bowels or the heart.

A watch, of course, to watch impatience flyLamps for the dark and shades against the sun;Foreboding, too, insisted on a gunAnd colored beads to soothe a savage eye.

In the theory they were sound on ExpectationHad there been situations to be in;Unluckily they were their situation:

One should not give a poisoner medicine,A conjurer fine apparatus, norA rifle to a melancholic bore.

3. The Crossroads

The friends who met here and embraced are gone,Each to his own mistake; one flashes onTo fame and ruin in a rowdy lie,A village torpor holds the other one,Some local wrong where it takes time to die:The empty junction glitters in the sun.

So at all quays and crossroads: who can tell,O places of decision and farewell,To what dishonor all adventure leads,What parting gift could give that friend protection,So orientated, his salvation needsThe Bad Lands and the sinister direction?

All landscapes and all weathers freeze with fear,But none have ever thought, the legends say,The time allowed made it impossible;For even the most pessimistic setThe limit of their errors at a year.What friends could there be left then to betray,

What joy take longer to atone for. YetWho would complete without extra dayThe journey that should take no time at all?

4. The Pilgrim

No windows in his suburb lights that bedroom whereA little fever heard large afternoons at play:His meadows multiply; that mill, though, is not thereWhich went on grinding at the back of love all day.

Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have foundThe castle where his Greater Hallows are interned;For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets roundSome ruin where an evil heritage was burned.

Could he forget a child's ambition to be oldAll institutions where it learned to wash and lie,He'd tell the truth, for which he thinks himself too young,

That everywhere on the horizon of his sighIs now, as always, only waiting to be toldTo be his father's house and speak his mother tongue.

5. The City