Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,
No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition. \
Although I can at least confine Your vanity and mine To stating timidly A timid similarity, We shall boast anyway: Like love I say.
Like love we don't know where or why Like love we can't compel or fly Like love we often weep Like love we seldom keep.
September 1939
49
In Memory of Sigmund Freud
{d. September 1939)
When there are so many we shall have to mourn, When grief has been made so public, and exposed To the critique of a whole epoch The frailty of our conscience and anguish,
Of whom shall we speak? For every day they die Among us, those who were doing us some good, And knew it was never enough but Hoped to improve a little by living.
Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished To think of our life, from whose unruliness So many plausible young futures With threats or flattery ask obedience.
But his wish was denied him; he closed his eyes Upon that last picture common to us all,
Of problems like relatives standing Puzzled and jealous about our dying.
For about him at the very end were still Those he had studied, the nervous and the nights, And shades that still waited to enter The bright circle of his recognition
Turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he Was taken away from his old interest
To go back to the earth in London, An important Jew who died in exile.
Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment His practice now, and his shabby clientele
Who think they can be cured by killing And covering the gardens with ashes.
They are still alive but in a world he changed Simply by looking back with no false regrets;
All that he did was to remember Like the old and be honest like children.
He wasn't clever at alclass="underline" he merely told The unhappy Present to recite the Past
Like a poetry lesson till sooner Or later it faltered at the line where
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged, How rich life had been and how silly, And was life-forgiven and more humble,
\
Able to approach the Future as a friend Without a wardrobe of excuses, without A set mask of rectitude or an Embarrassing over-familiar gesture.
No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit In his technique of unsettlement foresaw
The fall of princes, the collapse of Their lucrative patterns of frustration.
If he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life Would become impossible, the monolith
Of State be broken and prevented The co-operation of avengers.
Of course they called on God: but he went his way, Down among the Lost People like Dante, down
To the stinking fosse where the injured Lead the ugly life of the rejected.
And showed us what evil is: not as we thought Deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith, Our dishonest mood of denial, The concupiscence of the oppressor.
And if something of the autocratic pose, The paternal strictness he distrusted, still
Clung to his utterance and features., It was a protective imitation
For one who lived among enemies so long: If often he was wrong and at times absurd, To us he is no more a person Now but a whole climate of opinion
Under whom we conduct our differing lives: Like weather he can only hinder or help,
The proud can still be proud but find it A little harder, and the tyrant tries
To make him do but doesn't care for him much. He quietly surrounds all our habits of growth;
He extends, till the tired in even The remotest most miserable duchy
Have felt the change in their bones and are cheered,
And the child unlucky in his little State,
Some hearthwhere freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry,
Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape;
While as they lie in the grass of our neglect, So many long-forgotten objects Revealed by his undiscouraged shining
Are returned to us and made precious again;
Games we had thought we must drop as we grew up, Little noises we dared not laugh at, Faces we made when no one was looking.
But he wishes us more than this: to be free
Is often to be lonely; he would unite
The unequal moieties fractured
By our own well-meaning sense of justice,
Would restore to the larger the wit and will
The smaller possesses but can only use
For arid disputes, wouldgive back to The son the mother's richness of feeling.
But he would have us remember most of all
To be enthusiastic over the night
Not only for the sense of wonder It alone has to offer, but also
Because it needs our love: for with sad eyes
Its delectable creatures look up and beg
Us dumbly to ask them to follow; They are exiles who long for the future
That lies in our power. They too would rejoice
If allowed to serve enlightenment like him, Even to bear our cry of "Judas," As he did and all must bear who serve it.
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
November 1939
50
Lady, weeping at the crossroads Would you meet your love In the twilight with his greyhounds, And the hawk on his glove?
Bribe the birds then on the branches, Bribe them to be dumb, Stare the hot sun out of heaven That the night may come.
Starless are the nights of travel, Bleak the winter wind; Run with terror all before you And regret behind.
Run until you hear the ocean's Everlasting cry;
Deep though it may be and bitter You must drink it dry.
Wear out patience in the lowest Dungeons of the sea,
Searching through the stranded shipwrecks For the golden key.
Push on to the world's end, pay the Dread guard with a kiss; Cross the rotten bridge that totters Over the abyss.
There stands the deserted castle Ready to explore; Enter, climb the marble staircase Open the locked door.
Cross the silent empty ballroom, Doubt and danger past; Blow the cobwebs from the mirror See yourself at last.
Put your hand behind the wainscot, You have done your part; Find the penknife there and plunge it Into your false heart.
1940
51
Song for St. Cecilia's Day
I
In a garden shady this holy lady With reverent cadence and subtle psalm, Like a black swan as death came on Poured forth her song in perfect calm: And by ocean's margin this innocent virgin Constructed an 'Organ to enlarge her prayer, And notes tremendous from her great engine Thundered out on the Roman air.
Blonde Aphrodite rose up excited, Moved to delight by the melody, White as an orchid she rode quite naked In an oyster shell on top of the sea; At sounds so entrancing the angels dancing Came out of their trance into time again, And around the wicked in Hell's abysses The huge flame flickered and eased their pain.
Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions To all musicians, appear and inspire: Translated Daughter, come down and startle Composing mortals with immortal fire.
II
I cannot grow; I have no shadow To run away from, I only play
I cannot err; There is no creature Whom I belong to, Whom I could wrong.
I am defeat When it knows it Can now do nothing By suffering.
All you lived through, Dancing because you No longer need it For any deed.
I shall never be Different. Love me.