I am deeply unsettled by all my self-descriptions being spilled in a sea of HTML on this site. How long has it looked like that? I don’t want to know. There is only one thing that will cleanse the space: Auden. The last lines of the last poem I memorized for a high-school acting class, these words are one of the last connections I have to a time of unquestioning confidence.
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
Can’t be wrong.
Dara Weinberg 