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.