Стихи и эссе

Оден Уистан Хью

16. The Hero

Не parried every question that they hurled: "What did the Emperor tell you?" "Not to push" "What is the greatest wonder of the world?" "The bare man Nothing in the Beggar's Bush." Some muttered, "He is cagey for effect. A hero owes a duty to his fame. He looks too like a grocer for respect." Soon they slipped back into his Christian name. The only difference that could be seen From those who'd never risked their lives at all Was his delight in details and routine. For he was always glad to mow the grass, Pour liquids from large bottles into small, Or look at clouds through bits of colored glass.

17. Adventure

Others had swerved off to the left before, But only under protest from outside, Embittered robbers outlawed by the Law, Lepers in terror of the terrified. Now no one else accused these of a crime; They did not look ill: old friends, overcome, Stared as they rolled away from talk and time Like marbles out into the blank and dumb. The crowd clung all the closer to convention Sunshine and horses, for the sane know why The even numbers should ignore the odd: The Nameless is what no free people mention; Successful men know better than to try To see the face of their Absconded God.

18. The Adventurers

Spinning upon their central thirst like tops, They went the Negative Way toward the Dry; Be empty caves beneath an empty sky They emptied out their memories like a slop Which made a foul marsh as they dried to death, Where monsters bred who forced them to forget The lovelies their consent avoided; yet Still praising the Absurd with their last breath. They seeded out into their miracles: The images of each grotesque temptation Became some painter's happiest inspiration; And barren wives and burning virgins came To drink the pure cold water of their wells, And wish for beaux and children in their name.

19. The Waters

Poet, oracle and wit Like unsuccessful anglers by The ponds of apperception sit, Baiting with the wrong request The vectors of their interest; At nightfall tell the angler's lie. With time in tempest everywhere, To rafts of frail assumption cling The saintly and the insincere; Enraged phenomena bear down In overwhelming waves to drown Both sufferer and suffering. The waters long to hear our question put Which would release their longed-for answer, but.

20. The Garden

Within these gates all opening begins: White shouts and flickers through its green and red, Where children play at seven earnest sins And dogs believe their tall conditions dead. Here adolescence into number breaks The perfect circle time can draw on stone, And flesh forgives division as it makes Another's moment of consent its own. All journeys die here; wish and weight are lifted: Where often round some old maid's desolation Roses have flung their glory like a cloak, The gaunt and great the famed for conversation Blushed in the stare of evening as they spoke, And felt their center of volition shifted.

Good-Bye to the Mezzogiorno

(for Carlo Izzo)

 Out of a gothic North, the pallid children Of a potato, beer-or-whisky Guilt culture, we behave like our fathers and come Southward into a sunburnt otherwhere Of vineyards, baroque, la bella figura, To these feminine townships where men Are males, and siblings untrained in a ruthless Verbal in-fighting as it is taught In Protestant rectories upon drizzling Sunday afternoons-no more as unwashed Barbarians out for gold, nor as profiteers Hot for Old Masters, but for plunder Nevertheless-some believing amore Is better down South and much cheaper (Which is doubtful), some persuaded exposure To strong sunlight is lethal to germs (Which is patently false) and others, like me, In middle-age hoping to twig from What we are not what we might be next, a question The South seems never to raise. Perhaps A tongue in which Nestor and Apemantus, Don Ottavio and Don Giovanni make Equally beautiful sounds is unequipped To frame it, or perhaps in this heat It is nonsense: the Myth of an Open Road Which runs past the orchard gate and beckons Three brothers in turn to set out over the hills And far away, is an invention Of a climate where it is a pleasure to walk And a landscape less populated Than this one. Even so, to us it looks very odd Never to see an only child engrossed In a game it has made up, a pair of friends Making fun in a private lingo, Or a body sauntering by himself who is not Wanting, even as it perplexes Our ears when cats are called Cat and dogs either Lupo, Nero or Bobby. Their dining Puts us to shame: we can only envy a people So frugal by nature it costs them No effort not to guzzle and swill. Yet (if I Read their faces rightly after ten years) They are without hope. The Greeks used to call the Sun He-who-smites-from-afar, and from here, where Shadows are dagger-edged, the daily ocean blue, I can see what they meant: his unwinking Outrageous eye laughs to scorn any notion Of change or escape, and a silent Ex-volcano, without a stream or a bird, Echoes that laugh. This could be a reason Why they take the silencers off their Vespas, Turn their radios up to full volume, And a minim saint can expect rockets-noise As a counter-magic, a way of saying Boo to the Three Sisters: "Mortal we may be, But we are still here!" might cause them to hanker After proximities-in streets packed solid With human flesh, their souls feel immune To all metaphysical threats. We are rather shocked, But we need shocking: to accept space, to own That surfaces need not be superficial Nor gestures vulgar, cannot really Be taught within earshot of running water Or in sight of a cloud. As pupils We are not bad, but hopeless as tutors: Goethe, Tapping homeric hexameters On the shoulder-blade of a Roman girl, is (I wish it were someone else) the figure Of all our stamp: no doubt he treated her well, But one would draw the line at calling The Helena begotten on that occasion, Queen of his Second Walpurgisnacht, Her baby: between those who mean by a life a Bildungsroman and those to whom living Means to-be-visible-now, there yawns a gulf Embraces cannot bridge. If we try To "go southern", we spoil in no time, we grow Flabby, dingily lecherous, and Forget to pay bills: that no one has heard of them Taking the Pledge or turning to Yoga Is a comforting thought-in that case, for all The spiritual loot we tuck away, We do them no harm-and entitles us, I think To one little scream at A piacere, Not two. Go I must, but I go grateful (even To a certain Monte) and invoking My sacred meridian names, Vito, Verga, Pirandello, Bernini, Bellini, To bless this region, its vendages, and those Who call it home: though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.

September 1958

It's No Use Raising a Shout

It's no use raising a shout. No, Honey, you can cut that right out. I don't want any more hugs; Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs. Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do? A long time ago I told my mother I was leaving home to find another: I never answered her letter But I never found a better. Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do? It wasn't always like this? Perhaps it wasn't, but it is. Put the car away; when life fails, What the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do? In my spine there was a base, And I knew the general's face: But they've severed all the wires, And I can't tell what the general desires. Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do? In my veins there is a wish, And a memory of fish: When I lie crying on the floor, It says, "You've often done this before." Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do? A bird used to visit this shore: It isn't going to come any more. I've come a very long way to prove No land, no water, and no love. Here am I, here are you. But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

"Carry Her Over The Water"

Carry her over the water, And set her down under the tree, Where the culvers white all day and all night, And the winds from every quarter, Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love. Put a gold ring on her finger, And press her close to your heart, While the fish in the lake snapshots take, And the frog, that sanguine singer, Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love. The streets shal flock to your marriage, The houses turn round to look, The tables and chairs say suitable prayers, And the horses drawing your carriage Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeably of love.

1939?

THE TRAVELLER

No window in his suburb lights that bedroom where A little fever heard large afternoons at play: His meadows multiply: that mill, though is not there Which went on grinding at the back of love all day. Nor all his weeping ways through weary wastes have found The Castle where his Greater Hallows are interned: For broken bridges halt him, and dark thickets round Some ruin where an evil heritage was burned. Could he forget a child's ambition to be old And institutions where he learned to wash and lie' He'd tell the truth for which he thinks himself too young, That everywhere on the horizon of his sigh Is now, as always, only waiting to be told To be his father's house and speak his mother's tongue.

"Out of it steps the future of the poor,"

Out of it steps the future of the poor, Enigmas, executioners and rules, Her Majesty in a bad temper or The red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools. Great persons eye it in the twilight for A past it might so carelessly let in, A widow with a missionary grin, The foaming inundation at a roar. We pile our all against it when afraid, And beat upon its panels when we die: By happening to be open once, it made Enormous Alice see a wonderland That waited for her in the sunshine, and, Simply by being tiny made her cry.