Everything Turns Away Quite Leisurely from the Disaster

W.H. Auden was born 105 years ago today.

 

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

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.

• Lifted from my post, where I related some personal history.
• Where I noticed effingblooger has changed the font size on every single poem I posted that month. Effingblooger has also changed how my headers work, plus effingblooger is pissing me off in myriad ways. I'm effingsick of effingblooger. I'm not going to move to another effingplatform, but if any of you who've Kindly offered in the past to help me with effingblooger effingcoding are still willing, please send me an email.
• Objects collecting subjects.
• Humans are nice. It's used against us.
• The repressed never really went away.
• I wonder if Obama weighed the political benefits of antagonizing Iran versus the political liabilities of $5 a gallon gas and decided antagonize.
• Ten excellent reasons to bomb Iran.
• Yes, they are effingchristers.
• Pastor Sanctimonious acknowledges w/o using the term effingchristers that effingchristers help Obama.
• Eugene Robinson dances on effingchristers graves.
• Frothy and the construction of whiteness.
• Radical thought for the day.
• An alternative to the consumption model.
• Rachel Maddow is now goading Romney's billionaire (who has still not responded to Greenwald).
• Sorta like a conversation Earthgirl and I had last night over Indian.
• My past hell. Good riddance, though future hell will suxxxxxxx.
• More good United news.
• Stockhausen.
• Go throw the coins in your pocket at WFMU. Widget on left.
• Yes, I posted these songs last night. And?

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
   saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content 
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
   generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
   education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.