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March 13th, 2008
01:41 pm - Auden't know much about poetry - but I know what I like
I feel fortunate that the day I remembered to have a look at the Guardian's website was the day they began a series "Introducing seven of the greatest poets of the 20th century". It started with Eliot (don't worry girls, today is Plath day), and I got the feeling I could even warm to the old bugger as I read my print-outs (including Craig Raine's foreword) on a rainy night at the near-empty Bkt Merah Lane stalls, sat with cat, Carlsberg and a decent mee goreng. Such optimism.
Yesterday's Auden print-outs haven't been attended to yet (and I've been told by the boss to write off any plans for tonight - including Ferns' gig at the Esplanade Concourse, 6.30pm), but hoorah for the interweb that I can cut and paste something I really like here:
Musée des Beaux Arts
WH Auden
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 Brueghel'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 Estate of WH Auden. Curtis Brown Ltd and the Estate of WH Auden from Collected Poems published by Faber and Faber. More at http://books.guardian.co.uk/greatpoets/. If you get any, hold on to the booklets of poetry they're giving away with the paper. And if you don't want them I'll look after them for you.
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