Nazis Invade Poland

September 1, 1939

by W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives 

On Fifty-second Street 

Uncertain and afraid 

As the clever hopes expire 

Of a low dishonest decade: 

Waves of anger and fear 

Circulate over the bright 

And darkened lands of the earth, 

Obsessing our private lives; 

The unmentionable odour of death 

Offends the September night. 

Accurate scholarship can 

Unearth the whole offence 

From Luther until now 

That has driven a culture mad, 

Find what occurred at Linz, 

What huge imago made 

A psychopathic god: 

I and the public know 

What all schoolchildren learn, 

Those to whom evil is done 

Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew 

All that a speech can say

About Democracy, 

And what dictators do, 

The elderly rubbish they talk 

To 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 air 

Where blind skyscrapers use 

Their full height to proclaim 

The strength of Collective 

Man, Each language pours its vain 

Competitive excuse: 

But who can live for long 

In an euphoric dream; 

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face 

And the international wrong. 

Faces along the bar 

Cling to their average day: 

The lights must never go out, 

The music must always play, 

All the conventions conspire 

 To make this fort assume 

The furniture of home; 

Lest we should see where we are, 

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night 

Who have never been happy or good. 

The windiest militant trash 

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish: 

What mad Nijinsky wrote 

About Diaghilev 

Is true of the normal heart; 

For the error bred in the bone 

Of each woman and each man 

Craves what it cannot have, 

Not universal love 

But to be loved alone. 

From the conservative dark 

Into the ethical life 

The dense commuters come, 

Repeating their morning vow; 

"I will be true to the wife, 

I'll concentrate more on my work," 

And helpless governors wake 

To 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 voice 

To undo the folded lie, 

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street 

And the lie of Authority 

Whose buildings grope the sky: 

There is no such thing as the State 

And no one exists alone; 

Hunger allows no choice 

To the citizen or the police; 

We must love one another or die. 

Defenceless under the night 

Our world in stupor lies; 

Yet, dotted everywhere, 

Ironic points of light 

Flash out wherever the Just 

Exchange their messages: 

May I, composed like them 

Of Eros and of dust, 

Beleaguered by the same 

Negation and despair, 

Show an affirming flame.