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MEMORIAL FOR THE CITY

By W.H. Auden (In Memoriam Charles Williams, d. April 1945) ~In the self-same point that our soul is made sensual, in the self-same point is the City of God ordained to him from without beginning.~ Juliana of Norwhich

I The eyes of the crow and the eye of the camera open Onto Homers world, not ours. First and last They magnify earth, the abiding Mother of gods and men; if they notice either It is only in passing: gods behave, men die, Both feel in their own small way, but She Does nothing and does not care. She alone is seriously there.

The crow on the crematorium chimney And the camera roving the battle Record a space where time has no place. On the right a village is burning, in a marker-town to the left The soldiers fire, the mayor bursts into tears, The captives are led away, while far in the distance A tanker sinks into a dedolent sea. That is the way things happen; for ever and ever Plum-blossom falls on the dead, the roar of the waterfall covers The cries of the whipped and the sighs of the lovers And the hard bright light composes A meaningless moment into an eternal fact Which a whistling messenger disappears with into a defile: One enjoys glory, one endures shame; He may, she must. There is no one to blame.

The steady eyes of the crow and the camera's candid eye See as honestly as they know how, but they lie. The crime of life is not time. Even now, in this night Among the ruins of the Post-Vergilian City Where our past is a chaos of graves and the barbed-wire stretches ahead Into our future till it is lost to sight, Our grief if not Greek: As we bury our dead We know without knowing there is reason for what we bear, That our hurt is not a desertion, that we are to pity Neither ourselves nor our city; Whoever the searchlights catch, whatever the loudspeakers blare, We are not to despair.

II Alone in a room Pope Gregory whispered his name While the Emperor shone on a centreless world From wherever he happened to be; the New City rose Upon their opposition, the yes and no Of a rival allegiance; the sword, the local lord Were not all; there was home and Rome; Fear of the stranger was lost on the way to the shrine.

The facts, the acts of the City bore a double meaning: Limbs became hymns; embraces expressed in just A more permanent tie; infidel faces replaced The family foe in the choleric's nightmare; The children of water parodied in their postures The infinite patience of heaven; Those born under Saturn felt the gloom of the day of doom.

Scribes and innkeepers prospered; suspicious tribes combined To rescue Jerusalem from a dull god, And disciplined logicians fought to recover thought From the eccentricities of the private brain For the Sane City; farmed in her windows, orchards, ports, Wild beasts, deep rivers and dry rocks Lay nursed on the smile of a merciful Madonna.

In a sandy province Luther denounced as obscene The machine that so smoothly forgave and saved If paid; he announced to the Sinful City a grinning gap No rite could cross; he abased her before the Grace: Henceforth division was also to be her condition; Her conclusions were to include doubt, Her loves were to bear with her fear; insecure, she endured.

Saints tamed, poets acclaimed the raging herod of the will; The groundlings wept as on a secular stage The grand and the bad went to ruin in thundering verse; Sundered by reason and treason the City Found invisible ground for concord in measured sound, While wood and stone learned the shameless Games of man, to flatter, to show off, be pompous, to romp.

Nature was put to the Question in the Prince's name; She confessed, what he wished to hear, that she had no soul; Between his scaffold and her coldness the restrained style, The ironic smile became the worldly and devout, Civility a city grown rich: in his own snob way The unarmed gentleman did his job As a judge to her children, as a father to her forests.

In a national capital Mirabeau and his set Attacked mystery; the packed galleries roared And history marched to the drums of a clear idea, The aim of the Rational City, quick to admire, Quick to tire: she used up Napoleon and threw him away; Her pallid affected heroes Began their hectic quest for the prelapsarian man.

The deserts were dangerous, the waters rough, their clothes Absurd but, changing their Beatrices often, Sleeping little, they pushed on, raised the flag of the Word Upon lawless spots denied or forgotten By the fear or the pride of the Glittering City; Guided by hated parental shades, They invaded and harrowed the hell of her natural self.

Chimeras mauled them, they wasted away with the spleen, Suicide picked them off; sunk off Cape Consumption, Lost on the Tosspot Seas, wrecked on the Gibbering Isles Or trapped in the ice of despair at the Soul's Pole, They died, unfinished, alone; but now the forbidden, The hidden, the wild outside were known: Faithful without faith, they died for the Conscious City.

III

Across the square, Between the burnt-out Law Courts and Police Headquarters, Past the Cathedral far too damanged to repair, Around the Grand Hotel patched up to hold reporters, Near huts of some Emergency Committee, The barded wire runs through the abolished City.

Across the plains, Between two hills, two villages, two trees, two friends, The barbed wire runs which neither argues nor explains But, where it likes, a place, a path, a railroad ends, The humor, the cuisine, the rites, the taste, The patterns of the City, are erased.

Across our sleep The barbed wire also runs: It trips us so we fall And white ships sail without us though the others weep, It makes our sorry fig-leaf as the Sneerers' Ball, It ties the smiler to the double bed, It keeps on growing from the witch's head.

Behind the wire Which is behind the mirror, our Image is the same Awake or dreaming: It has no image to admire, No age, no sex, no memory, no creed, no name, It can be counted, multiplied, employed In any place, at any time destroyed.

Is it our friend? No; that is our hope; that we weep and It does not grieve, That for It the wire and the ruins are not the end: This is the flesh we are but never would believe, The flesh we die but it is death to pity; This is Adam waiting for His City.

Let Our Weakness speak

Without me Adam would have fallen irrevocably with Lucifer; he would never have been able to cry ~O Felix culpa~ It was I who suggested his theft to Prometheus; my frailty cost Adonis his life. I heard Orpheus sing; I was not quite as moved as they say. I was not taken in by the sheep's-eyes of Narcissus; I was angry with Psyche when she struck a light. I was in Hector's confidence; so far as it went. Had he listened to me Oedipus would never have left Corinth; I cast no vote at the trial of Orestes. I fell asleep when Diotima spoke of love; I was not responsible for the monsters which tempted St Anthony. To me the Savior permitted His Fifth Word from the cross; to be a stumbling-block to the stoics. I was the unwelcome third at the meetings of Tristan with Isolda; they tried to poison me. I rose with Galahad on his Quest for the San Graal; without understanding I kept his vow. I was the just impediment to the marriage of Faustus with Helen; I know a ghost when I see one. With Hamlet I had no patience; but I forgave Don Quixote all for his admission in the cart. I was the missing entry in Don Giovanni's list; for which he could never account. I assisted Figaro the Barber in all his intrigues; when Prince Tamino arrived at wisdom I too obtained my reward. I was innocent of the sin of the Ancient Mariner; time after time I warned Captain Ahab to accept happiness. As for Metropolis, that too-great city; her delusions are not mine. Her speeches impress me little, her statistics less; to all who dwell on the public side of her mirrors, resentments and no peace. At the place of my passion her photographers are gathered together; but I shall rise again to hear her judged.

#w.h. auden #charles williams #poetry

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