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The Composer -- W H Auden

Guest poem submitted by Janice:
(Poem #1845) The Composer
 All the others translate: the painter sketches
 A visible world to love or reject;
 Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches
 The images out that hurt and connect.
 From Life to Art by painstaking adaption
 Relying on us to cover the rift;
 Only your notes are pure contraption,
 Only your song is an absolute gift.

 Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading
 The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine,
 Our climate of silence and doubt invading;
 You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,
 Are unable to say an existence is wrong,
 And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.
-- W H Auden
Auden always surprises me. Just when I think I've read everything, or almost
everything, out pops another poem that I've never seen -- and end up loving.
Take "The Composer" for example. I have Auden's collected poems lovingly
stashed on my book shelf and then I find this poem on my GRE subject test --
the one I took last Saturday! Just goes to show that poetry does truly find
you and not the other way round!

I love what he says about the painter and the poet, even though they only
'translate'... interesting how he says 'relying on us to cover the rift'.
And then suddenly -- almost like a symphony itself -- the poem takes off and
rises high above itself when he describes music. Music that delights,
uplifts, cascades over us and 'our climate of silence and doubt invading'.
So beautiful :)

Janice.

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