[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

New York tragedy (Long)



Colleagues,

I was reminded this morning of a poem from another era, and as I read it,
it seemed so apt.  I don't often post to the list, but I thought a few of
you might find something in this too.

Marty Levitt

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
     W.H. Auden


          I sit in one of the dives
          On Fifty-second Street
          Uncertain and afraid
          As the clever hopes expire
          Of a low dishonest decade:
          Waves of anger and fear
          Circulate over the bright
          And darkened lands of the earth,
          Obsessing our private lives;
          The unmentionable odour of death
          Offends the September night.

          Accurate scholarship can
          Unearth the whole offence
          From Luther until now
          That has driven a culture mad,
          Find what occurred at Linz,
          What huge imago made
          A psychopathic god:
          I and the public know
          What all schoolchildren learn,
          Those to whom evil is done
          Do evil in return.

          Exiled Thucydides knew
          All that a speech can say
          About Democracy,
          And what dictators do,
          The elderly rubbish they talk
          To an apathetic grave;
          Analysed all in his book,
          The enlightenment driven away,
          The habit-forming pain,
          Mismanagement and grief:
          We must suffer them all again.

          Into this neutral air
          Where blind skyscrapers use
          Their full height to proclaim
          The strength of Collective Man,
          Each language pours its vain
          Competitive excuse:
          But who can live for long
          In an euphoric dream;
          Out of the mirror they stare,
          Imperialism's face
          And the international wrong.

          Faces along the bar
          Cling to their average day:
          The lights must never go out,
          The music must always play,
          All the conventions conspire
          To make this fort assume
          The furniture of home;
          Lest we should see where we are,
          Lost in a haunted wood,
          Children afraid of the night
          Who have never been happy or good.

          The windiest militant trash
          Important Persons shout
          Is not so crude as our wish:
          What mad Nijinsky wrote
          About Diaghilev
          Is true of the normal heart;
          For the error bred in the bone
          Of each woman and each man
          Craves what it cannot have,
          Not universal love
          But to be loved alone.

          From the conservative dark
          Into the ethical life
          The dense commuters come,
          Repeating their morning vow;
          'I will be true to the wife,
          I'll concentrate more on my work,'
          And helpless governors wake
          To resume their compulsory game:
          Who can release them now,
          Who can reach the dead,
          Who can speak for the dumb?

          All I have is a voice
          To undo the folded lie,
          The romantic lie in the brain
          Of the sensual man-in-the-street
          And the lie of Authority
          Whose buildings grope the sky:
          There is no such thing as the State
          And no one exists alone;
          Hunger allows no choice
          To the citizen or the police;
          We must love one another or die.


          Defenseless under the night
          Our world in stupor lies;
          Yet, dotted everywhere,
          Ironic points of light
          Flash out wherever the Just
          Exchange their messages:
          May I, composed like them
          Of Eros and of dust,
          Beleaguered by the same
          Negation and despair,
          Show an affirming flame.


***************************************************
Martin L. Levitt, Ph.D.
Associate Librarian for Administration,
American Philosophical Society &
Professor of History, Temple University

105 S. 5th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106-3386
(215) 440-3403 (Office)

APS Home: www.amphilsoc.org
Temple Home: www.temple.edu/histdept/archives.html
***************************************************

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>