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As I Walked Out One Evening
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As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
'O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
WH Auden
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Read poems about / on: africa, river, justice, mirror, city, flower, ocean, snow, kiss, time, green, water, sky, love, world, life, running, star, dance
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Comments about this poem (As I Walked Out One Evening
by
WH Auden
) |
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comments about this poem (As I Walked Out One Evening by
WH Auden
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Richard Leather
(3/29/2009 6:32:00 AM) |
Auden's simple act of walking out encounters first the wheat field of humanity that will be cut down by time. Within the field, however, he encounters the hope of love expressed in a song - another voice than his own. Yet the twisted experience expressed therein dashes future hopes. The river flows on; nature alone is regular and enduring. Mankind is fraught with contradictions and perverse juxtapositions.
The use of nursery language (Jack and Jill) and surrealist visual imaginings (tea cup cracks opening to another land - of the dead) assembles the cultural basics of his time to express a futility running to the core of his humanity.
It is a despairing and angry utterance, in which love is a cheat instead of the source of universal salvation popularly sung and preached.
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Chas Evans
(9/25/2007 8:32:00 AM) |
simply a brilliant poem
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