If, On Account Of The Political Situation - W.H. Auden

[Larry Robinson]

If, On Account Of The Political Situation


If, on account of the political situation,

there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and
men

Lying about in the countryside neither drunk nor
asleep,

If all sailings have been cancelled till further
notice,

If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,

Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,

The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,

That is not at all unusual for this time of year.

If that were all, we should know how to manage. 
Flood, fire,

The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,

Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal
grief,

These are after all our familiar tribulations,

And we have been through them all before, many, many
times.

As events which belong to the natural world where

The occupation of space is the real and final fact

And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,

They occur again and again but only to pass

Again and again into their formal opposites,

>From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to
work,

So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern
composed

By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly
happen

Is permanent in a general average way.



Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we
seemed

To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the
tiger,

The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,

Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:

To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not

So impossible after all; to cut our losses

And bury our dead was really quite easy.  That was why

We were always able to say:  "We are children of God,

And our Father has never forsaken His people."

But then we were children:  That was a moment ago,

Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced

Into our lives.  Why were we never warned?  Perhaps we
were.

Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain

We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone

In the waiting room of the country junction, looking

Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion

But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way
in?

Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:

We can only say that now It is there and that nothing

We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest
use,

For nothing like It has happened before.  It's as if

We had left our house for five minutes to mail a
letter,

And during that time the living room had changed
places

With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;

It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered

Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching
our shadow

Sleepily stretching itself at the window.  I mean

That the world of space where events reoccur is still
there,

Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere

Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:

I mean that although there's a person we know all
about

Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,

That person has become a fiction; our true existence

Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.



That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome

The nursery bogey or the winecellar ghost, why even

The violent howling of winter and war has become

Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop.  We are
afraid

Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare

Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.

This is the Abomination.  This is the wrath of God.

	- W.H. Auden