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SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
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 dead,
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.


Defenseless 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."

On September 1st 1939:
Hitler orders the extermination of those deemed by the state to be 'mentally ill" and orders the Nazi Armies to invade Poland. 17 Days later in concert with their German Allies, Russia invades Poland from the east and occupies the countries of Latvia, Lithuiania and Estonia according to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Treaty.

World War II has begun. 52 Million people will die as a direct result of the war. A war that by the time it was over, taught humanity about the inhumanity of concentration camps, work camps, "arbeit macht frei",conscription, flamethrowers, napalm, firebombing, carpet bombing, scorched earth, ethnic cleansing and the atomic bomb.

On September 1st 2004, Polish soldiers serve side by side with Americans and British soldiers in defense of liberty in Iraq while German,French and Russian governments protest their actions. I hope to God the Poles have forgiven us for our leaving them behind the Iron Curtain and I thank them all for the courage to stand up to tyranny. They are an example to all of us. The Germans, French and Russians serve as an example of how short some peoples memories really are and how spoiled some cultures have become.

W.H. Auden's poem "September 1st, 1939," fits the world stage today as the United States stands in rigid defiance to tyranny and yet many around the world wish for and live in desire for an increasingly pathological isolation as solution to our situation. It appears to W.H. Auden in 1939 as though we are prepared to take an incredible gamble for no good reason, and where would we be if he were correct?

Auden's poem, with all its incredulity, bitterness, dread and humanity-lacerating guilt, resonates with uncanny power. It is music for the coming shadows. It was written in New York City, the old city of Ralph Kramden, Damon Runyon, "Dave the Dude", Jack Dempseys "joint" and a colorful Mayor, an Italian fellow named "Fiorello", who knew how to run a city.

The poem wasn't written yesterday, but it might have been.

This is a day of shame for all Democracies. This day should serve as a warning to all future generations. Today is a warning to all free men and lovers of liberty that there is a cost to neglecting your obligations to civilization and that cost can be seen reflected in the eyes of every Polish citizen. Warsaw was not a just a victorious battlefield for the Nazis, but it was also the first of many graveyards for pacifist "good intentions".

Update: You can have Mike Moore, you can have Jimmy Carter. I will stand with this man. I am ashamed that we did not stand with him. No country can ask more of its men than what he sacrificed for freedom and no one could have been treated worse for his sacrifice.

Posted @ September 01, 2004 04:20 PM | History file

Comments

Thanks for that!

Posted by: Cara Remal at September 1, 2004 07:36 PM

I'm sure your thanks to the Poles are appreciated but I imagine that being not so far removed from tyranny they are simply doing what is the obvious thing to do and see appreciation for it as a little, well, weird. And I am sure they have forgiven us, meaning America, because we weren't the top dog in their abandonment and we gave them a helping hand in their struggle up. They will have their last laugh at western Europe, although it will have come at too high a cost to matter.

Posted by: Don at September 2, 2004 09:00 AM