Seventy years ago this week, on September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland and began the Second World War. For all the media attention over the last few years concerning D-Day and other WWII anniversaries, I was surprised that this day came and went without comment. I wonder how many years it will be before we forget the dates and significance WW II had on world and US history. An entire generation of Americans, no less than the Europeans and others in the world, were affected by the war and its political aftermath. Yet not a word about this date. Here is a poem by W.H. Auden. He had left England, where he was born and was living in New York City. One the one hand, you have to read this poem from the perspective of the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Fascism throughout the world. On the other hand, I believe every poem holds a message for the present as well. So what is the message here?
September 1, 1939I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-Second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September Night.Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.Exiled Thucydides knewAll that a speech can sayAbout Democracy,And what dictators do,The elderly rubbish they talkTo an apathetic grave;Analysed all in his book,The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.Into this neutral airWhere blind skyscrapers useTheir full height to proclaimThe strength of Collective Man,Each language pours its vainCompetitive excuse:But who can live for longIn an euphoric dream;Out of the mirror they stare,Imperialism's faceAnd the international wrong.Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights must never go out,the music must always play,All the conventions conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we should see where we are,Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of the nightWho have never been happy or good.The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wroteAbout DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have,Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow,"I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,"And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game:Who can release them now,Who can reach the deaf,Who can speak for the dumb?All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-streetAnd the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky:There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exist alone;Hunger allows no choiceto the citizen or the police;We must love another or die.Defenceless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages;May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleagered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.
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