It's the most wonderful time of the year...to force your family to hear some poetry. (Advent with Auden Part V, "Well, that is that.")
Fifth Post on W.H. Auden's "For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio"
Hope you had a Merry Christmas Day! I invite you, on this second day of Christmas, to read a beautiful (and my favorite) section of the closing lines of Auden’s oratorio. My challenge (if you’re up for it) is to find the person in your home who likes poetry the least and force them to listen to you read it aloud. This is what I do, frequently, to the groans of my family members. It’s what Christmas is all about!
From “For the Time Being” by W.H. Auden:
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes —
Some have got broken — and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week —
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted — quite unsuccessfully —
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers…
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became aYou and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father:
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practise his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will be done, that, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.
Well, thanks so much for nerding out with me over Auden in the Advent season. I know high modern poetry is not everyone’s cup of tea!
I look forward to exploring some more Methodist and Wesleyan topics in the coming year, and hope to do more reviews of books as well. Hope you enjoy all twelve days of the Christmas feast! See all of you in the new year.