Way back in 1976 I wrote "The Thing Which Sticks," a long unfinished poem about writers in the 1930s (in some people's view, not mine, Auden's heyday). I revised it in March 2013 and posted it here on 1 April 2013. And in October 1981 I wrote a sonnet, "The Artist," which is self-explanatory. I posted it here on 14 June 2012.
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Hang it all, Wystan Auden: great your gift but veined
Like cheese with worm: from Christ Church – “Wystan says” –
Camply declaring law, to late life ’blained
And slippered, all men’s uncle in a faze
Of fag smoke, mourning moral ills in your maze
Of words, your work was feminate,
Mother’s teat your lifelong bait:
A flouncy archness
Too often flabbed its florid fine-meshed bays,
Like linen starchless.
“Unfinished weaning”? No, rather a wilful urge
To “other” your third son status; thus to claim
Dogmatic rights in world and love, to merge
And part Mama and son, and itched by shame
Embrace vocation that the Muse might tame
The Lord’s command that babes be born,
Jack and Jill one-fleshed in spawn.
But did not woman,
Pert Rhoda, tempt your manhood to enflame,
Become your leman?
All failed: once more you grieved in Kallman’s pathic clutch.
Think though! To scorn man’s duties to his girl
Invites perversion: two men’s sexual touch,
Then man and child, or animal; and whirl
The tables, girl and girl; then last, the skirl
Of transdom, screaming against fact,
Wigged or trousered, science quacked!
And contraception
Forborne by church and state – that fatal pearl! –
Loosed this vexation.
So sex for fun, not childing, thus became a “right,”
Quick-followed by abortion’s blade: what doubt
The child was double-victimed, killed like a mite
Enwombed, or sexed-with, grown? But they who pout
At Law face ends, their tribe grown old and stout –
For childless – cursed to dim and die:
Nature, ruthless, puts them by,
And a tribe that’s virile
Swamps in, seizing, smashing, what once had clout,
Laid bare as puerile.
This post your death, but trahison has its harsh deserts.
Your crust of Goethed wisdom failed to mute
Your nanced “Miss God says no!” wealing no hurts
But trifling, rather, the Kind’s self-dispute.
Waysided now by epoch’s turn, your bruit
Of late-termed Christian Staat must sink,
Spurned as frankly too much ink,
For the struggle’s started
’Twixt withered West and Crescent which will moot
Who’s firmer-hearted.
====================
© March 2023
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Hang it all, Wystan Auden: great your gift but veined
Like cheese with worm: from Christ Church – “Wystan says” –
Camply declaring law, to late life ’blained
And slippered, all men’s uncle in a faze
Of fag smoke, mourning moral ills in your maze
Of words, your work was feminate,
Mother’s teat your lifelong bait:
A flouncy archness
Too often flabbed its florid fine-meshed bays,
Like linen starchless.
“Unfinished weaning”? No, rather a wilful urge
To “other” your third son status; thus to claim
Dogmatic rights in world and love, to merge
And part Mama and son, and itched by shame
Embrace vocation that the Muse might tame
The Lord’s command that babes be born,
Jack and Jill one-fleshed in spawn.
But did not woman,
Pert Rhoda, tempt your manhood to enflame,
Become your leman?
All failed: once more you grieved in Kallman’s pathic clutch.
Think though! To scorn man’s duties to his girl
Invites perversion: two men’s sexual touch,
Then man and child, or animal; and whirl
The tables, girl and girl; then last, the skirl
Of transdom, screaming against fact,
Wigged or trousered, science quacked!
And contraception
Forborne by church and state – that fatal pearl! –
Loosed this vexation.
So sex for fun, not childing, thus became a “right,”
Quick-followed by abortion’s blade: what doubt
The child was double-victimed, killed like a mite
Enwombed, or sexed-with, grown? But they who pout
At Law face ends, their tribe grown old and stout –
For childless – cursed to dim and die:
Nature, ruthless, puts them by,
And a tribe that’s virile
Swamps in, seizing, smashing, what once had clout,
Laid bare as puerile.
This post your death, but trahison has its harsh deserts.
Your crust of Goethed wisdom failed to mute
Your nanced “Miss God says no!” wealing no hurts
But trifling, rather, the Kind’s self-dispute.
Waysided now by epoch’s turn, your bruit
Of late-termed Christian Staat must sink,
Spurned as frankly too much ink,
For the struggle’s started
’Twixt withered West and Crescent which will moot
Who’s firmer-hearted.
====================
© March 2023
