by Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:21 pm
September 1, 1939<br>         <br>         I sit in one of the dives <br>On Fifty-second Street <br>Uncertain and afraid <br>As the clever hopes expire <br>Of a low dishonest decade: <br>Waves of anger and fear <br>Circulate over the bright <br>And darkened lands of the earth, <br>Obsessing our private lives; <br>The unmentionable odour of death <br>Offends the September night. <br>Accurate scholarship can <br>Unearth the whole offence <br>From Luther until now <br>That has driven a culture mad, <br>Find what occurred at Linz <br>What huge imago made <br>A psychopathic god: <br>I and the public know <br>What all schoolchildren learn, <br>Those to whom evil is done <br>Do evil in return. <br><br>Exiled Thucydides knew <br>All that a speech can say <br>About Democracy, <br>And what dictators do, <br>The elderly rubbish they talk <br>To an apathetic grave; <br>Analysed all in his book, <br>The enlightenment driven away, <br>The habit-forming pain, <br>Mismanagement and grief: <br>We must suffer them all again. <br><br>Into this neutral air <br>Where blind skyscrapers use <br>Their full height to proclaim <br>The strength of Collective Man, <br>Each language pours its vain <br>Competitive excuse: <br>But who can live for long <br>In an euphoric dream; <br>Out of the mirror they stare, <br>Imperialism's face <br>And the international wrong. <br><br>Faces along the bar <br>Cling to their average day: <br>The lights must never go out, <br>The music must always play, <br>All the conventions conspire <br>To make this fort assume <br>The furniture of home; <br>Lest we should see where we are, <br>Lost in a haunted wood, <br>Children afraid of the night <br>Who have never been happy or good. <br><br>The windiest militant trash <br>Important Persons shout <br>Is not so crude as our wish: <br>What mad Nijinsky wrote <br>About Diaghilev <br>Is true of the normal heart; <br>For the error bred in the bone <br>Of each woman and each man <br>Craves what it cannot have, <br>Not universal love <br>But to be loved alone. <br><br>From the conservative dark <br>Into the ethical life <br>The dense commuters come, <br>Repeating their morning vow; <br>'I will be true to the wife, <br>I'll concentrate more on my work,' <br>And helpless governors wake <br>To resume their compulsory game: <br>Who can release them now, <br>Who can reach the deaf, <br>Who can speak for the dumb? <br><br>All I have is a voice <br>To undo the folded lie, <br>The romantic lie in the brain <br>Of the sensual man-in-the-street <br>And the lie of Authority <br>Whose buildings grope the sky: <br>There is no such thing as the State <br>And no one exists alone; <br>Hunger allows no choice <br>To the citizen or the police; <br>We must love one another or die. <br><br>Defenceless under the night <br>Our world in stupor lies; <br>Yet, dotted everywhere, <br>Ironic points of light <br>Flash out wherever the Just <br>Exchange their messages: <br>May I, composed like them <br>Of Eros and of dust, <br>Beleaguered by the same <br>Negation and despair, <br>Show an affirming flame.<br><br>-- WH Auden <p></p><i></i>