September 1, 1939
\nW. H. Auden – 1907-1973<\/p>\n
I sit in one of the dives
\nOn Fifty-second Street
\nUncertain and afraid
\nAs the clever hopes expire
\nOf a low dishonest decade:
\nWaves of anger and fear
\nCirculate over the bright
\nAnd darkened lands of the earth,
\nObsessing our private lives;
\nThe unmentionable odour of death
\nOffends the September night.<\/p>\n
Accurate scholarship can
\nUnearth the whole offence
\nFrom Luther until now
\nThat has driven a culture mad,
\nFind what occurred at Linz,
\nWhat huge imago made
\nA psychopathic god:
\nI and the public know
\nWhat all schoolchildren learn,
\nThose to whom evil is done
\nDo evil in return.<\/p>\n
Exiled Thucydides knew
\nAll that a speech can say
\nAbout Democracy,
\nAnd what dictators do,
\nThe elderly rubbish they talk
\nTo an apathetic grave;
\nAnalysed all in his book,
\nThe enlightenment driven away,
\nThe habit-forming pain,
\nMismanagement and grief:
\nWe must suffer them all again.<\/p>\n
Into this neutral air
\nWhere blind skyscrapers use
\nTheir full height to proclaim
\nThe strength of Collective Man,
\nEach language pours its vain
\nCompetitive excuse:
\nBut who can live for long
\nIn an euphoric dream;
\nOut of the mirror they stare,
\nImperialism’s face
\nAnd the international wrong.<\/p>\n
Faces along the bar
\nCling to their average day:
\nThe lights must never go out,
\nThe music must always play,
\nAll the conventions conspire
\nTo make this fort assume
\nThe furniture of home;
\nLest we should see where we are,
\nLost in a haunted wood,
\nChildren afraid of the night
\nWho have never been happy or good.<\/p>\n
The windiest militant trash
\nImportant Persons shout
\nIs not so crude as our wish:
\nWhat mad Nijinsky wrote
\nAbout Diaghilev
\nIs true of the normal heart;
\nFor the error bred in the bone
\nOf each woman and each man
\nCraves what it cannot have,
\nNot universal love
\nBut to be loved alone.<\/p>\n
From the conservative dark
\nInto the ethical life
\nThe dense commuters come,
\nRepeating their morning vow;
\n“I will be true to the wife,
\nI’ll concentrate more on my work,”
\nAnd helpless governors wake
\nTo resume their compulsory game:
\nWho can release them now,
\nWho can reach the deaf,
\nWho can speak for the dumb?<\/p>\n
All I have is a voice
\nTo undo the folded lie,
\nThe romantic lie in the brain
\nOf the sensual man-in-the-street
\nAnd the lie of Authority
\nWhose buildings grope the sky:
\nThere is no such thing as the State
\nAnd no one exists alone;
\nHunger allows no choice
\nTo the citizen or the police;
\nWe must love one another or die.<\/p>\n
Defenceless under the night
\nOur world in stupor lies;
\nYet, dotted everywhere,
\nIronic points of light
\nFlash out wherever the Just
\nExchange their messages:
\nMay I, composed like them
\nOf Eros and of dust,
\nBeleaguered by the same
\nNegation and despair,
\nShow an affirming flame.<\/p>\n
From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright \u00a9 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden.