W.H.

Auden Lies and Lethargies Amos Elkana

A
 

2


3


4


5


6


 
p


7 8


9


10


11


12


 


 
13 Ebow 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
            
16. Lies and lethargies police the world
17. In its periods of peace. What pain taught
18. Is soon forgotten; we celebrate
19. What ought to happen as if it were done,
20. Are blinded by our boasts. Then back they come,
21. The fears that we fear. We fall asleep
22. Only to meet the idiot children of
23. Our revels and wrongs; farouche they appear,
24. Reluctant look-behinds, loitering through
25. The mooing gate, menacing or smiling,
26. Nocturnal trivia, torts and dramas,

          
28 noises 29
 
27 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38


39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
           
40. Wrecks, arrivals, rose-bushes, armies,
41. Leopards and laughs, alarming growths of
42. Moulds and monsters on memories stuffed
43. With dead men's doodles, dossiers written
44. In lost lingos, too long an account
45. To take out in trade, no time either,
46. Since we wake up. We are warm, our active
47. Universe is young; yet we shiver:
48. For athwart our thinking the threat looms,
49. Huge and awful as the hump of Saturn
50. Over modest Mimas, of more deaths


51 
52 Ebow, Sul II 53  54  55  56 
    
 


57 58  59 60 61  62  63

     
 
2

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

           
64. And worse wars, a winter of distaste
65. To last a lifetime. Our lips are dry, our
66. Knees numb; the enormous disappointment
67. With a smiling sigh softly flings her
68. Indolent apron over our lives
69. And sits down on our day. Damning us,
70. On our present purpose the past weighs
71. Heavy as the alps, for the absent are never
72. Mislaid or lost: as lawyers define
73. The grammar of our grief, their ghosts rise,
74. Hanged or headless, hosts who disputed

  

   

 

 
76 mute 77

 
75 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

 
   

 
86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98
           
 88. With good governors, their guilty flesh
89. Racked and raving but unreconciled,
90. The punished people to pass sentence
91. On the jolly and just; and joining these
92. Come worse warlocks, the wailing infants
93. Who know now they will never be born,
94. Refused a future. Our failings give
95. Their resentment seizin; our Zion is
96. A doomed Sodom dancing its heart out
97. To treacly tunes, a tired Gomorrah


98. Infatuated with her former self
99 100

  

[WAIT UNTIL FADE-OUTS FINISH BEFORE SAYING:]

45. Whose dear dreams though they dominate still
46. Are formal facts which refresh no more.