The Truth About Auden

 

Auden was a poet

As one is a lawyer

A doctor or an architect;

He rarely took his work home

And had even his moments of leisure

Were blocked out in a schedule

 

He felt about his work and subjects

As a lawyer ‘feels’ about

A particularly challenging tax agreement,

A submission to a judge well delivered,

Or a client who - by a careful

Argument from some laws of a land -

Escapes a prison sentence

 

He was rarely estatic

Just as he was also rarely miserable

And felt God’s touch just once,

Sitting on the lawn

At the end of  a dinner party

 

He could keep

The world of thought

Far from what he actually did

 

And with this in mind,

His conversion to the Catholic Church of Angles

Was the chance to accept

A well tried framework of certainties

And a vague commitment

To acts of charity

 

It was proclaimed - in the interests

Of respectability - that he married Erika

Mann, and - in his private war on Fascism -

Broadcast radio from within Spain’s Civil War;

 

But the unproclaimed truth (if one digs deeper)

Is that Wystan and Erika

Never shared a bed nor more than

Friendship and a useful contract,

And alas his radio career

Lasted seven days, in a language

No listener could speak

 

It’s not that he was bad

Or did not care -

It was just that

He was a gay Englishman

Living in New York

Who wore slippers all day long,

Read detective novels,

Solved crossword puzzles,

And went to bed

On the strict stroke of nine.

 

- 15/10/02