EXULANSIS

What’s the point of talking
When you are not my words even understanding
So I just walk away from myself
For I am alien to yourself
Are you not understanding
Or feigning a lack of understanding
Maybe you hate me or envy me
But I only love thee
When that love is not understood
A state of Exulansis, most misunderstood
I then do enter
Not because I want to be attention’s centre
But because you cannot me decipher
So here I feel like a mere cipher
And drift away forever
Your pity, I don’t seek ever
My mind is now faraway
With you all it can never stay

Another day?
It'd be too late
only moments
to regret:

mission uncompleted
duty not executed
the promise reneged
the skills not displayed
the intended words unsaid
the inspiration unheeded
the love neglected
the prayer desired
not articulated

and what's left
is but the heartache-

the green meadow
where once in childhood
you and your friends played
on each bright morrow
might be parched
by the scorch
of time's uncaring sun-
and you'd find
every rose dead
and buried-

the stream where
you your paper-boat
once did navigate
might have been drenched
and what's left
might be debris and dirt-

the hidden tree
which you climbed
where you built
your secret home
might have been felled
and steel gate girded -

ah, how wise was Horace
who this advice wrote
Carpe diem---seize the day!
( reminding us
the day to celebrate
ere time would have fled
and we'd but live in lonely regret)

An old man now I am
through the past years
as I scan
and this I've learned:

time and life
for no one
will  they wait
if forfeited
what's left
is but the deepest regret

HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOUR

Auden & Isherwood
strolling in China
trying to soak up

The War
by the process of
osmosis

staining it
with words
observe

(at first what seems)  
green horses
but turns out to be

only white horses
painted green
for camouflage purposes.

that evening in Canton
also offering them
the futility of two men

trying to
put a rat
into a bottle

a woman who lived
in a beehive
pouring water into a sieve

War knocks
over the inkwell
spills into men’s lives

covers
the white pages
of their wishes

makes the idea
of Hell
all too real

the spilt ink
eating
the words of men

who send letters home
and die in pain
never to return

only in others' memories
& useless dreams
marble memorials

while green horses
champ the grasses
the bridles & the bits

clanking & glinting
in the hot sun
of Now

as this last lost
evening
dies


*

Sonnets from China was originally published in a considerably different form as “In Time of War.” “In Time of War” was a sonnet sequence included in Journey to a War (December 1938), a book by Auden and Christopher Isherwood that included a travel diary, photos, and a long poetic commentary.

Here is one of Auden's magnificent sonnets from that journey...

HERE WAR IS SIMPLE

Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan

For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:

And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking. Dachau.