It's always been one of my very favourite Auden poems, this: and in my half-century of living I can't think there's ever been a year in which it has felt more apropos than 2017. An Age of Trump sort of poem; although since my youth I've had the inkling that there is something, somehow, hopeful in the terminal reindeer and their golden moss.
The piers are pummelled by the waves;Don't think me petty, but my ear suffers slight tremulations at the Americanisation of
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
Caesar’s double-bed is warmI know Auden was in effect an American at this time, but still. Nor is it that I can suggest meaningful improvement:
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Caesar’s double-bed is warmmisses the understatement of the actual version. Ah well.
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I CANNOT MAKE MY MARK
On a pink official form.
Couldn't agree more. I have been reading more Auden post-Trump and Brexit. "The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout" so precisely captures the Presidential Twitterverse.
ReplyDeleteI did not know this poem, and it's just wonderful.
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