You asked me which of Auden’s poems <br />were my favourite, and I sighed <br />for memory’s fade, then walked to the dusty shelf <br />where next to those volumes of Eliot <br />with their brown-paper covers for those <br />precious wartime books allowed <br />a ration of Canadian paper for <br />fighting men to read in those <br />few moments of leisure for the open heart and <br />the vision of a peacetime world, was <br /> <br />‘Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944 W.H.Auden’ <br /> <br />which fell open at page 54, <br />‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats (d.January 1939) ’ <br />‘Earth, receive an honoured guest…’; <br />those pages yellowed more than <br />the others around them as if <br />read often late at night <br />under what was still gaslight <br />with respectful but unwashed hands <br />after cocoa and biscuits with a scrape of butter <br /> <br />and it all came back: 1953, that was the year <br />when there was only one poet Yeats.. <br />and poetry and music were the same; <br />I turned the pages – they fell open once again, <br />‘Time will say nothing but I told you so’… <br /> <br />So many poems there, unread, or unremembered, <br />how could it be that I abandoned Auden, <br />not hearing his music, while <br />other interests began to pull? <br /> <br />Then I sat silent at the thought <br />that a great poet of great mind, great heart, <br />was writing, writing, most of my lifetime <br />while I was wrapt in other things; <br /> <br />sat silent, honouring <br />what is to be honoured <br />as best we can; <br />what is to be honoured.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0027-in-honour-of-honour-and-whauden/
