Уистан Оден - Стихи и эссе

     Out of a bellicose fore-time, thundering
     head-on collisions of cloud and rock in an
     up-thrust, crevasse-and-avalanche, troll country,
     deadly to breathers,

     it whelms into our picture below the melt-line,
     where tarns lie frore under frowning cirques, goat-bell,
     wind-breaker, fishing-rod, miner's-lamp country,
     already at ease with

     the mien and gestures that become its kindness,
     in streams, still anonymous, still jumpable,
     flows as it should through any declining country
     in probing spirals.

     Soon of a size to be named and the cause of
     dirty in-fighting among rival agencies,
     down a steep stair, penstock-and-turbine country,
     it plunges ram-stam,

     to foam through a wriggling gorge incised in softer
     strata, hemmed between crags that nauntle heaven,
     robber-baron, tow-rope, portage-way country,
     nightmare of merchants.

     Disemboguing from foothills, now in hushed meanders,
     now in riffling braids, it vaunts across a senile
     plain, well-entered, chateau-and-cider-press country,
     its regal progress

     gallanted for a while by quibbling poplars,
     then by chimneys: led off to cool and launder
     retort, steam-hammer, gasometer country,
     it changes color.

     Polluted, bridged by girders, banked by concrete,
     now it bisects a polyglot metropolis,
     ticker-tape, taxi, brothel, foot-lights country,
     à-la-mode always.

     Broadening or burrowing to the moon's phases,
     turbid with pulverised wastemantle, on through
     flatter, duller, hotter, cotton-gin country
     it scours, approaching

     the tidal mark where it puts off majesty,
     disintegrates, and through swamps of a delta,
     punting-pole, fowling-piece, oyster-tongs country,
     wearies to its final

     act of surrender, effacement, atonement
     in a huge amorphous aggregate no cuddled
     attractive child ever dreams of, non-country,
     image of death as

     a spherical dew-drop of life. Unlovely
     monsters, our tales believe, can be translated
     too, even as water, the selfless mother
     of all especials.

     On this day tradition allots
        to taking stock of our lives,
     my greetings to all of you, Yeasts,
        Bacteria, Viruses,
     Aerobics and Anaerobics:
        A Very Happy New Year
     to all for whom my ectoderm
        is as Middle-Earth to me.

     For creatures your size I offer
        a free choice of habitat,
     so settle yourselves in the zone
        that suits you best, in the pools
     of my pores or the tropical
        forests of arm-pit and crotch,
     in the deserts of my fore-arms,
        or the cool woods of my scalp.

     Build colonies: I will supply
        adequate warmth and moisture,
     the sebum and lipids you need,
        on condition you never
     do me annoy with your presence,
        but behave as good guests should,
     not rioting into acne
        or athlete's-foot or a boil.

     Does my inner weather affect
        the surfaces where you live?
     Do unpredictable changes
        record my rocketing plunge
     from fairs when the mind is in tift
        and relevant thoughts occur
     to fouls when nothing will happen
        and no one calls and it rains.

     I should like to think that I make
        a not impossible world,
     but an Eden it cannot be:
        my games, my purposive acts,
     may turn to catastrophes there.
        If you were religious folk,
     how would your dramas justify
        unmerited suffering?

     By what myths would your priests account
        for the hurricanes that come
     twice every twenty-four hours,
        each time I dress or undress,
     when, clinging to keratin rafts,
        whole cities are swept away
     to perish in space, or the Flood
        that scalds to death when I bathe?

     Then, sooner or later, will dawn
        a Day of Apocalypse,
     when my mantle suddenly turns
        too cold, too rancid, for you,
     appetising to predators
        of a fiercer sort, and I
     am stripped of excuse and nimbus,
        a Past, subject to Judgement.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how
everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman
may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the
sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into
the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must
have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

     The archaeologist's spade
     delves into dwellings
     vacancied long ago,

     unearthing evidence
     of life-ways no one
     would dream of leading now,

     concerning which he has not much
     to say that he can prove:
     the lucky man!

     Knowledge may have its purposes,
     but guessing is always
     more fun than knowing.

     We do know that Man,
     from fear or affection,
     has always graved His dead.

     What disastered a city,
     volcanic effusion,
     fluvial outrage,

     or a human horde,
     agog for slaves and glory,
     is visually patent,

     and we're pretty sure that,
     as soon as palaces were built,
     their rulers

     though gluttoned on sex
     and blanded by flattery,
     must often have yawned.

     But do grain-pits signify
     a year of famine?
     Where a coin-series

     peters out, should we infer
     some major catastrophe?
     Maybe. Maybe.

     From murals and statues
     we get a glimpse of what
     the Old Ones bowed down to,

     but cannot conceit
     in what situations they blushed
     or shrugged their shoulders.

     Poets have learned us their myths,
     but just how did They take them?
     That's a stumper.

     When Norsemen heard thunder,
     did they seriously believe
     Thor was hammering?

     No, I'd say: I'd swear
     that men have always lounged in myths
     as Tall Stories,

     that their real earnest
     has been to grant excuses
     for ritual actions.

     Only in rites
     can we renounce our oddities
     and be truly entired.

     Not that all rites
     should be equally fonded:
     some are abominable.

     There's nothing the Crucified
     would like less
     than butchery to appease Him.

     Over the heather the wet wind blows,
     I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

     The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
     I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

     The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
     My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

     Aulus goes hanging around her place,
     I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

     Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;
     There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

     She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
     I want my girl and I want my pay.

     When I'm a veteran with only one eye
     I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

     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.