W.H Auden, had a face more wrinkled than Don Chipp. The message is, if you are a deep thinker, it’ll destroy your facebook profile. Stick to shopping.
For comparative purposes we include this portrait of Don Chipp. (for the kiddies out there we must remind you that Donny made the split from the Liberal party under the slogan ” keep the bastards honest’ to found the Australian Democrats, a ‘new wave’ in Australian politics, Eventually they sold out also. That’s why you’ve never heard of them).
Dear reader we wanted to find something empathetic about the end of the British Empire. Or at the very least celebrate (in an under- hand sort of way) that the Poms have out- done the Eye- Ties on corona virus deaths. That really does put the kibosh on pommy exceptionalism. And wot (we wrote this in cockney for our U.K readership) with Brexit and saddling up to Trump, only to be dumped, is about as fin de siècle as you can get. Poor pommy bastards, even on VE Day where every pom is allowed to wallow in the fact that they stood alone against the hun, was a no show. It’s akin to having no red carpet at the Brownlow. UNTHINKABLE! If any-fink was symbolic of the fall of Empire its the fact that Britannia is the absolute wooden spooner in the corona virus stakes. So we looked hard, had a go at Cavafy and, “Waiting for the barbarians” , but we thought; “Jeez, we should get a Pom to deliver the coup de grace”. So thinking of Boris and his corona batting average, we came up with Auden. This seemed singularly apt, for being an Anglo-American, he encapsulates just what’s so globally progressive about Johnson and Trump. Children of the neo – liberalist mind set. Ayn Rand’s love Children. Bit like the Anne Hamilton Byrne family sect with extra peroxide. And what a sect they’ve become!!
Auden loved a smoke! It made his writing better.
We dedicate this to the next empire and the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. And the conviction that in the new era, there’ll be a lot of belting and plenty of lonely roads. And as Donald said to the American people on corona mortality, “you better get used to it”.
Anyway, here’s Auden, he also wrote “The Age of Anxiety” and dedicated it to either the National Party leadership or Prince William before he was even born. Its eerily presentimental.
The Fall of Rome
W. H. Auden – 1907-1973
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
He could smoke, drink and speak all at the same time.
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
These days pollies can only do one thing at the same time.
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
That’s why they have minders.
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.