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<\/i>, by W.H. Auden<\/p>\nAuden comes up for me all the time in my life. His words are in my brain. The only other poet I can think of who takes up that much brain-space, who helps me figure out how to say things, is Yeats. (Then there’s Shakespeare, too, but any time you put Shakespeare in any kind of a list with other people, he throws the whole thing off-balance). I’ll be in some situation and suddenly I’ll remember Auden’s words “let the healing fountains start …” (which is from his poem, coincidentally, on Yeats) Or I’ll be troubled and remind myself that I need to try to love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart. (This post about “doing my best”<\/a> is a great example of that). I know I’m crooked. We all are. But we must love anyway. Or try to.<\/p>\n Then, of course, he has written two lines which – as difficult as they are – are words I actually try to live by<\/i>. “If equal affection cannot be \/ Let the more loving one be me.” This is a phrase that comes up in my head, what, once, twice a day? I have a hard time picking a favorite anything – but if I had to choose to re-read only one poem for the rest of my life, it would be “The More Loving One<\/a>“. I can honestly say that that poem has helped me<\/i> in living my life. There are many lines of Shakespeare as well that have actually been “candle beams” in the darkness, so shining a good deed in a naughty world and all that. But “The More Loving One” stands, for me, as one of the most profound poems of all time. And he doesn’t use what Hemingway calls the “ten dollar words”. It’s a poem of simple language, very few metaphors, a clear and open expression of what is, actually, a philosophy<\/i>. If you feel like reading a long-ass post about a personal story from my life that circles around the poem, here you go<\/a>. (That’s another one of those personal posts that brought up a vicious response in some guy who told me that “no wonder I’m single” after reading it. I will love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart, I will love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart, I will love my crooked neighbor with my crooked heart<\/em> … I chant it over and over in such situations!)<\/p>\n What can I say. Auden is in my brain.<\/p>\n The wonderful Clive James said about Auden:<\/p>\n “The need to find an expression for his homosexuality was the first technical obstacle to check the torrential course of Auden’s unprecedented facility. A born master of directness was obliged straightaway to find a language for indirection, thus becoming immediately involved with the drama that was to continue for the rest of his life – a drama in which the living presence of technique is the antagonist.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is sometimes an almost unbearable tension in Auden’s best poems. It seems to be that he is expressing everything, but you ache to hear more, you wonder what else this amazing voice has to say. Like most great artists, what he withholds<\/i> is almost just as interesting as what he reveals<\/i>.<\/p>\n Michael Schmidt wrote, “He overshadows the poets of his generation.” In the same way that Shakespeare overshadows the other playwrights and poets of his current day. You have to kind of get Auden out of the way to see what else was going on. And there was a lot going on!!<\/p>\n There are too many poems to even talk about, too many that I love and go back to, again and again and again. He comforts me. He expresses the horror I felt on 9\/11. He understands terror and despair. He lived in “interesting times”, and was responsive to them in his work. Many poets were undone by WWI and WWII. The horror took away their voices. Auden was just the opposite.<\/p>\n Edward Mendelson, who edited this lovely selection of Auden’s poems, writes:<\/p>\n “Then, in June 1933, Auden experienced what he later called a ‘Vision of Agape’. He was sitting on a lawn with three colleagues from the school where he was teaching, when, he wrote, ‘quite suddenly and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power which, though I consented to it, was irresistible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life I knew exactly – because, thanks to the power, I was doing it – what it meant to love one’s neighbor as oneself.’ Before this, his poems had only been able to celebrate moments of impersonal erotic intensity, which he called ‘love’. Now, in the poem ‘Out on the lawn I lie in bed,’ prompted by his vision, he had praise for everything around him.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I think of this poem as the “vision of agape” poem, even though that is not its title. So so good. I mean: “lion griefs”? I wish I could write like that. Too many good lines to even count. Here is the whole poem. It was the first moment Auden felt he really “broke through” in his work, and you can feel the difference in his poems forever afterwards. Before “vision of agape” he was one type of poet, after “vision of agape” he was another. He had been able to see the universal.<\/p>\n \nA Summer Night<\/u><\/p>\n Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Lucky, this point in time and space Equal with colleagues in a ring That later we, though parted then, Now north and south and east and west She climbs the European sky, To gravity attentive, she And, gentle, do not care to know, Soon, soon, through the dykes of our content But when the waters make retreat May these delights we dread to lose, After discharges of alarm \n![\"boaud131.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/boaud131.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nVega conspicuous overhead
\nIn the windless nights of June,
\nAs congregated leaves complete
\nTheir day’s activity; my feet
\nPoint to the rising moon.<\/p>\n
\nIs chosen as my working-place,
\nWhere the sexy airs of summer,
\nThe bathing hours and the bare arms,
\nThe leisured drives through a land of farms
\nAre good to a newcomer.<\/p>\n
\nI sit on each calm evening
\nEnchanted as the flowers
\nThe opening light draws out of hiding
\nWith all its gradual dove-like pleading,
\nIts logic and its powers:<\/p>\n
\nMay still recall these evenings when
\nFear gave his watch no look;
\nThe lion griefs loped from the shade
\nAnd on our knees their muzzles laid,
\nAnd Death put down his book.<\/p>\n
\nThose I love lie down to rest;
\nThe moon looks on them all,
\nThe healers and the brilliant talkers,
\nThe eccentrics and the silent walkers,
\nThe dumpy and the tall.<\/p>\n
\nChurches and power stations lie
\nAlike among earth’s fixtures:
\nInto the galleries she peers
\nAnd blankly as a butcher stares
\nUpon the marvelous pictures.<\/p>\n
\nCan notice nothing here, though we
\nWhom hunger does not move,
\nFrom gardens where we feel secure
\nLook up and with a sigh endure
\nThe tyrannies of love:<\/p>\n
\nWhere Poland draws her eastern bow,
\nWhat violence is done,
\nNor ask what doubtful act allows
\nOur freedom in this English house,
\nOur picnics in the sun.<\/p>\n
\nThe crumpling flood will force a rent
\nAnd, taller than a tree,
\nHold sudden death before our eyes
\nWhose river dreams long hid the size
\nAnd vigours of the sea.<\/p>\n
\nAnd through the black mud first the wheat
\nIn shy green stalks appears,
\nWhen stranded monsters gasping lie,
\nAnd sounds of riveting terrify
\nTheir whorled unsubtle ears,<\/p>\n
\nThis privacy, need no excuse
\nBut to that strength belong,
\nAs through a child’s rash happy cries
\nThe drowned parental voices rise
\nIn unlamenting song.<\/p>\n
\nAll unpredicted let them calm
\nThe pulse of nervous nations,
\nForgive the murderer in the glass,
\nTough in their patience to surpass
\nThe tigress her swift motions.<\/p>\n