Auden
24 Jan 2023 - 16 Apr 2026
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living
- – In Memory of WB Yeats
He wasn't clever at all: he merely told the unhappy Present to recite the Past like a poetry lesson till sooner or later it faltered at the line where long ago the accusations had begun, and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
- Always seems to come up for me in connection with death.
Earlier
- Hm I seem to quote that poem a lot. Auden tried to disclaim it, especially the line "we must love one another or die".