We must love one another or die

….All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky;
There is no such thing as the State
And no-one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Thus spake W. H. Auden in the last two stanzas of his poem September 1, 1939. Eros and dust, negation and despair, ironic points of light…my god. I have no religion no faith to guide me, all I have are words. Ah, but with such words as these, I am comforted.

Even with the First World War as his template, Auden couldn’t know the depth of negation and despair that lay before him when he wrote these words. If he had foreseen the battlefields, the camps, the mushroom cloud, could he have spoken of an affirming flame? At what point is hope delusional?

I was wandering around YouTube the other night and found dozens of recordings of poets reading their own work – Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Edna St. Vincent fucking Millay baby, Auden reading September 1, 1938, Sylvia Plath reading Lady Lazurus (talk about creepy; the voice of a suicide reading an ode to her own death); Eliot reading The Waste Land. He thought April was the cruelest month, but I don’t know if I believe that any more. False hope is better than none at all.

Surrounded by plenty I am defined by lack. There is no treatment for disbelief.