“Auden accepts the correction or reform of the self as a prime human responsibility and a matter with which poetry should be concerned, difficult because of what he called ‘the radical gulf between Christian faith and all worldly values.” (Frank Kermode in the LRB 7.2.08, www.lrb.co.uk)
Here we were again; in that same sharp, awkward search for words in order to make, to hack out from the raw materials, a conversation; to fight our way forwards – across Auden’s gulf.
I sat back and watched the conversation drifting like cigarette smoke (suddenly deposited into a movie from the forties or fifties, I guess), slowly dispersing, but over the decades the countless talk has left a veneer of sticky tar on every surface. Without explosive force, lasers or x-rays – the demolition gang – we will eventually choke to death; our throats closing, a final rebellion against all the old ways: the desire for the end of it all surpassing the transient hopes of finding the new song.
Longing for the night, we walk down unrecognised streets long emptied of all meaning except the will to inflict damage. Behind lowered blinds plotting continues deep into the night. The noxious fumes from the bomb factories leak out, wrecked cars pile up, police patrols know never to visit. We are pursued by giggling harpies; swift on their long legs, their hair flying on the wind of their own desire, buoyed up by mad and colourful cocktails.
I do my best to avoid a Lenten struggle – isn’t my life Lenten enough? Who will judge? Meanwhile I’m attracted to the idea of a quiet joy; feet on the ground, amazed at the vast array of phenomena endlessly changing, endlessly interesting . . .
I imagine her saying: ‘if only we could find the right way to love.’ Her eyes probed, sought the evidence of his heart.
He thought: she wants so much, if I don’t give it, it will be torn out of me . . . or I’ll be destroyed . . . Her words were engraved in a place he didn’t even know existed, branded in white-hot needlepoint. When he came to reflect on the events, later in the boredom of his own bed, he found it very hard to remember precisely what had happened.