fallslikesnow

Anthony Burgess T.S.Eliot W.H.Auden From The Best American Poetry Anthony Burgess's Tremor of Intent (1966), his satire of espionage novels, bears a double epigraph. The first is from W. H. Auden: << But between the day and night The choice is free to all, and light Falls equally on black and white. >> The second is from T. S. Eliot: << The worst that can be said of most of our malefactors, from statesmen to thieves, is that they are not men enough to be damned . >>

Three Short Poems : 'The underground roads Are, as the dead prefer them, Always tortuous.' 'When he looked the cave in the eye, Hercules Had a moment of doubt.' 'Leaning out over The dreadful precipice, One contemptuous tree.'

Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love W.H. Auden Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephermeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's sensual ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreadful cards foretell, Shall be paid, but not from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn...

I. three signs of an airman: practical jokes nervousness before taking off rapid healing after injury three kinds of enemy walk: the grandious stunt the melancholic stagger the paranoic sidle three kinds of enemy bearing: the condor's stoop the toad's stupor the robin's stance three kinds of enemy face: the fucked hen the favorite puss the stone-in-the-rain three terms of enemy speech: I mean quite frankly speaking as a scientist etcetera three enemy questions: am I boring you? could you tell me the time? are you sure you're fit enough? three results of an enemy victory: impotence cancer paralysis three counterattacks complete mastery of the air lastly but ten it's moving again lastly but nine I forgot the sign lastly but eight it's getting late lastly but seven why aren't there eleven? lastly but six I dont like its ...tricks the maid is just dribbling tea and I shall not be disturbed until supper...

The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast. " The Fall of Rome by W. H. Auden

"...Not to lose time, not to get caught, Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water Or stone whose conduct can be predicted..." From " In Praise of Limestone ", W.H.Auden (1948)