Unsentimental Auden Knew

by Hugh Follett

 

"Poetry makes nothing happen..."

— W. H. Auden

 

Unsentimental Auden knew
Poetry would never do.
Write or draw or sing or speak
Still the strong prey on the weak.
States and soldiers, cops and courts,
Prove the primal rule of force;
And to those beneath a whip,
Hamlet matters not a bit.
But the forces that coerce
Are unevenly dispersed:
Here they rend, but there they miss;
And each gap and oasis
Gives us pause to think on routes
Ferrying us past such jackboots.
In this effort art assists:
For its simulacra list
(If well done) the elements
Of Utopian dissents:
Paths, alternatives, and keys
Not to what is, but what may be.
Imagined realms precede the real,
And through our dreams and wishes steal
With their power and romance.
Wystan erred in this instance;
The future is an artist's child,
On visions are its features styled;
And it is our task to dream,
That things become more than they seem.