Brok3n’s Reviews > Selected Poems of W. H. Auden > Status Update

After shaking paws with his dog
(Whose bark would tell the world that he is always kind)
The hangman sets off briskly over the heath;
He does not know yet who will be provided
To do the high works of justice with:

Bucolics
VI Plains

As it is, though, I know them personally
Only as a landscape common to two nightmares:
Across them, spotted by spiders from afar,
I have tried to run, knowing there was no hiding and no help;
On them, in brilliant moonlight, I have lost my way
And stood without a shadow at th edead centre
Of an abominable desolation,
Like Tarquin ravished by his post-coital sadness

Old saints on millstones float with cats
To islands out at sea
Whereon no female pelvis can
Threaten their agape.

Only a very wicked or conceited man,
About to sink somewhere in mid-Atlantic,
Could think Poseidon's frown was meant for him in person,
But it is only human to believe
The little lady of the glacier lake has fallen
In love with the rare bather whom she drowns.

I'm Nordic myself, but even so
I'd much rather stay
Where the nearest person who could have me hung is
Some ridges away.