Уистан Оден - Стихи и эссе

     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]

     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.

     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.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay
If 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,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling 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.

Mechanic, merchant, king,
Are warmed by the cold clown
Whose head is in the clouds
And never can get down.

Into a solitude
Undreamed of by their fat
Quick dreams have lifted me;
The north wind steals my hat.

On clear days I can see
Green acres far below,
And the red roof where I
Was Little Trinculo.

There lies that solid world
These 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 shakes
The busy and devout.

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

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
    Routed Apollo's
Battalions 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 nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
     Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
     Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
     A social science.

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

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
                     If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;

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

Great person eye it in the twilight for
A 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 wonderland
That waited for her in sunshine, and,
Simply by being tiny, made her cry.

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

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

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

One should not give a poisoner medicine,
A conjurer fine apparatus, nor
A rifle to a melancholic bore.

The friends who met here and embraced are gone,
Each to his own mistake; one flashes on
To 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 needs
The 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 set
The limit of their errors at a year.
What friends could there be left then to betray,

What joy take longer to atone for. Yet
Who would complete without extra day
The journey that should take no time at all?

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

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

Could he forget a child's ambition to be old
All 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 sigh
Is now, as always, only waiting to be told
To be his father's house and speak his mother tongue.