Written by
Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden |
She looked over his shoulderFor vines and olive trees,Marble well-governed citiesAnd ships upon untamed seas,But there on the shining metalHis hands had put insteadAn artificial wildernessAnd a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown,No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,Yet, congregated on its blankness, stoodAn unintelligible multitude,A million eyes, a million boots in line,Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a faceProved by statistics that some cause was justIn tones as dry and level as the place:No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;Column by column in a cloud of dustThey marched away enduring a beliefWhose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.She looked over his shoulderFor ritual pieties,White flower-garlanded heifers,Libation and sacrifice,But there on the shining metalWhere the altar should have been,She saw by his flickering forge-lightQuite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spotWhere bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)And sentries sweated for the day was hot:A crowd of ordinary decent folkWatched from without and neither moved nor spokeAs three pale figures were led forth and boundTo three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, allThat carries weight and always weighs the sameLay in the hands of others; they were smallAnd could not hope for help and no help came:What their foes like to do was done, their shameWas all the worst could wish; they lost their prideAnd died as men before their bodies died.She looked over his shoulderFor athletes at their games,Men and women in a danceMoving their sweet limbsQuick, quick, to music,But there on the shining shieldHis hands had set no dancing-floorBut a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,Loitered about that vacancy; a birdFlew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,Were axioms to him, who'd never heardOf any world where promises were kept,Or one could weep because another wept.The thin-lipped armorer,Hephaestos, hobbled away,Thetis of the shining breastsCried out in dismayAt what the god had wroughtTo please her son, the strongIron-hearted man-slaying AchillesWho would not live long.
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