City Without Walls

 City Without Walls and Other Poems by WH Auden, 121 pages

     We can only

     do what it seems to us we were made for, look at

          this world with a happy eye

          but from a sober perspective.

These poems were written in the late '60s, and for Auden, himself only slightly younger than the century, things are winding down and wearing out.  If the energy remains, it is now disorganized, aimless, vulgar.  And yet he endures with humor.

     I at least can learn

     to live with obesity

     and a little fame.

Still there are moments when even irony yields.

     Like music when

     Begotten notes

     New notes beget

     Making the flowing

     Of time a growing,

     Till what it could be

     At last it is,

     Where Fate is Freedom,

     Grace and Surprise.

And the effort is always worth making, however slim the chance of success.

     To speak is human because human to listen,

     beyond hope, for an Eighth Day,

     when the creatured Image shall become the Likeness