W. H. Auden

I wish I loved the work of W. H Auden (1907-1973) more than I do. Alas, his Collected Poems lie heavy in my lap. Overall, his poetry strikes me as bloodless: intellectual, discursive, aphoristic, even prim. His was the verse of the born essayist; especially in his later books, his poems take positions and develop arguments. They seem distanced from experience and cold-hearted toward human nature. Indeed, he seems a man at two with human nature.

Paradoxically, though, he wrote one of the poems I treasure most, Musée des Beaux Arts, one of the finest ekphrastic poems of all time and one of the wisest statements about human nature! There’s no doubt that he wrote a handful of canonical poems, but his Collected runs to 1000 pages, 900 of which leave me cold. So much pontification and so much doggerel!

Here, to help you sleep, three of his later works. The first two are sing-song, lackluster little essays dating from 1969. The last one was written soon before the poet’s death. One would expect a deathbed poem concerning a religious mystery to have more longing in it, or numinousness, or reckoning. This once just seems sardonic. Taken at face value, it unintentionally conjures the image of Christ as a man with Downs Syndrome!

Smelt and Tasted

The nose and palate never doubt
Their verdicts on the world without,
But instantaneously condemn
Or praise each fact that reaches them:
Our tastes may change in time, it’s true,
But for the fairer if they do.

Compared with almost any brute,
Our savouring is less acute,
But, subtly as they judge, no beast
Can solve the mystery of a feast,
Where love is strengthened, hope restored,
In hearts by chemical accord.


Heard and Seen

Events reported by the ear
Are soft or loud, not far or near,
In what is heard we only sense
Transition and impermancence:
A bark, a laugh, a rifle-shot,
These may concern us or may not.

What-has-been and what-is-to-be
To vision form a unity:
The seen hill stays the way it is,
But forecasts greater distances,
And we acknowledge with delight
A so-on after every sight.


The Question

All of us believe
we were born of a virgin
(for who can imagine

his parents copulating?),
and cases are known
of pregnant Virgins.

But the Question remains:
from where did Christ get
that extra chromosome?

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