THE MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN
TO W. H. AUDEN
PART ONE
Come, then, companions, this is the spring of blood,
Heart’s heyday, movement of masses, beginning of good.
R. E. WARNER
1
Now to be with you, elate, unshared,
My kestrel joy, O hoverer in wind,
Over the quarry furiously at rest
Chaired on shoulders of shouting wind.
Where’s that unique one, wind and wing married,
Aloft in contact of earth and ether;
Feathery my comet, Oh too often
From heaven harried by carrion cares.
No searcher may hope to flush that fleet one
Not to be found by gun or glass,
In old habits, last year’s hunting-ground,
Whose beat is wind-wide, whose perch a split second.
But surely will meet him, late or soon,
Who turns a corner into new territory;
Spirit mating afresh shall discern him
On the world’s noon-top purely poised.
Void are the valleys, in town no trace,
And dumb the sky-dividing hills:
Swift outrider of lumbering earth
Oh hasten hither my kestrel joy!
2
But Two there are, shadow us everywhere
And will not let us be till we are dead,
Hardening the bones, keeping the spirit spare,
Original in water, earth and air,
Our bitter cordial, our daily bread.
Turning over old follies in ante-room,
For first-born waiting or for late reprieve,
Watching the safety-valve, the slackening loom,
Abed, abroad, at every turn and tomb
A shadow starts, a hand is on your sleeve.
O you, my comrade, now or tomorrow flayed
Alive, crazed by the nibbling nerve; my friend
Whom hate has cornered or whom love betrayed,
By hunger sapped, trapped by a stealthy tide,
Brave for so long but whimpering in the end:
Such are the temporal princes, fear and pain,
Whose borders march with the ice-fields of death,
And from that servitude escape there’s none
Till in the grave we set up house alone
And buy our liberty with our last breath.
3
Somewhere beyond the railheads
Of reason, south or north,
Lies a magnetic mountain
Riveting sky to earth.
No line is laid so far.
Ties rusting in a stack
And sleepers – dead men’s bones –
Mark a defeated track.
Kestrel who yearly changes
His tenement of space
At the last hovering
May signify that place.
Iron in the soul,
Spirit steeled in fire,
Needle trembling on truth –
These shall draw me there.
The planets keep their course,
Blindly the bee comes home,
And I shall need no sextant
To prove I’m getting warm.
Near that miraculous mountain
Compass and clock must fail,
For space stands on its head there
And time chases its tail.
There’s iron for the asking
Will keep all winds at bay,
Girders to take the leaden
Strain of a sagging sky.
Oh there’s a mine of metal,
Enough to make me rich
And build right over chaos
A cantilever bridge.
4
Make no mistake, this is where you get off,
Sue with her suckling, Cyril with his cough,
Bert with a blazer and a safety razor,
Old John Braddleum and Terence the toff.
And now, may I ask, have you made any plans?
You can’t go further along these lines;
Positively this is the end of the track;
It’s rather late and there’s no train back.
So if you are wanting to get anywhere
You must use your feet or take to the air,
The penny-a-liner, the seven-course-diner,
Prebendary Cute and the water-diviner –
Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere?
‘Is it mountain there or mirage across the sand?’
That’s Terra Incognita, Bogey-Man’s-Land:
Why not give it a trial? You might go further
And fare much worse. ‘No, no, that’s going rather
Too far; besides, the whole thing may just be a sell.’
Then book your bed-sitter at the station hotel
Or stay at the terminus till you grow verminous,
Eating chocolate creams from the slot-machines;
But don’t blame me when you feel unwell.
Line was a good line, ballasted on grit,
Surveyors weren’t fools, platelayers didn’t quit,
Viaduct for river, embankment for marsh,
Cutting for tough rock, signal for smash.
Can you keep the system going? Can you replace
Rolling stock? Is everything all right at the base?
Supposing they cut your communications
Can you live on here without any rations?
Then don’t blame me when you’re up the tree,
No trains coming through and you’re feeling blue,
When you’re left high and dry and you want to cry,
When you’re in the cart and you’ve got a weak heart,
When you’re up the pole and you can’t find your soul,
When the shops are all looted and you’ve run out of coal.
So it’s me for the mountain. But before I begin
I’m taking a light engine back along the line
For a last excursion, a tour of inspection,
To clear the head and to aid the digestion.
Then I’ll hit the trail for that promising land;
May catch up with Wystan and Rex my friend,
Go mad in good company, find a good country,
Make a clean sweep or make a clean end.
5
Let us be off! Our steam
Is deafening the dome.
The needle in the gauge
Points to a long-banked rage,
And trembles there to show
What a pressure’s below.
Valve cannot vent the strain
Nor iron ribs refrain
That furnace in the heart.
Come on, make haste and start
Coupling-rod and wheel
Welded of patient steel,
Piston that will not stir
Beyond the cylinder
To take in its stride
A teeming countryside.
A countryside that gleams
In the sun’s weeping beams;
Where wind-pump, byre and barrow
Are mellowed to mild sorrow,
Agony and sweat
Grown over with regret.
What golden vesper hours
Halo the old grey towers,
What honeyed bells in valleys
Embalm our faiths and follies!
Here are young daffodils
Wind-wanton, and the hills
Have made their peace with heaven.
Oh lovely the heart’s haven,
Meadows of endless May,
A spirit’s holiday!
Traveller, take care,
Pick no flowers there!
PART TWO
Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead.
WILLIAM BLAKE
6
Nearing again the legendary isle
Where sirens sang and mariners were skinned,
We wonder now what was there to b
eguile
That such stout fellows left their bones behind.
Those chorus-girls are surely past their prime,
Voices grow shrill and paint is wearing thin,
Lips that sealed up the sense from gnawing time
Now beg the favour with a graveyard grin.
We have no flesh to spare and they can’t bite,
Hunger and sweat have stripped us to the bone;
A skeleton crew we toil upon the tide
And mock the theme-song meant to lure us on:
No need to stop the ears, avert the eyes
From purple rhetoric of evening skies.
7
First Defendant speaks
I that was two am one,
We that were one are two.
Warm in my walled garden the flower grew first,
Transplanted it ran wild on the estate.
Why should it ever need a new sun?
Not navel-string in the cold dawn cut,
Nor a weaned appetite, nor going to school
That autumn did it. Simply, one day
He crossed the frontier and I did not follow:
Returning, spoke another language.
Blessed are they that mourn,
That shear the spring grass from an early grave:
They are not losers, never have known the hour
When an indifferent exile
Passes through the metropolis en route
For Newfoundland.
Mother earth, understand me. You send up
So many leaves to meet the light,
So many flights of birds,
That keep you all their days in shade and song;
And the blown leaf is part of you again
And the frozen blackbird falls into your breast.
Shall not the life-giver be life-receiver?
Am I alone to stand
Outside the natural economy?
Pasteurize mother’s milk,
Spoon out the waters of comfort in kilogrammes,
Let love be clinic, let creation’s pulse
Keep Greenwich time, guard creature
Against creator, and breed your supermen!
But not from me: for I
Must have life unconditional, or none.
So, like a willow, all its wood curtailed,
I stand by the last ditch of narrowing world,
And stir not, though I see
Pit-heads encroach or glacier crawl down.
8
This was your world and this I owe you,
Room for growing, a site for building,
The braced sinew, the hands agreeing,
Mind foreseeing and nerve for facing.
You were my world my breath my seasons
Where blood ran easy and springs failed not,
Kind was clover to feet exploring
A broad earth and all to discover.
Simple that world, of two dimensions,
Of stone mansions and good examples;
Each image actual, nearness was no
Fear and distance without a mirage.
Dawn like a greyhound leapt the hill-tops,
A million leaves held up the noonday,
Evening was slow with bells pealing,
And night compelling to breast and pillow.
This was my world, Oh this you gave me,
Safety for seed, petal uncurled there;
Love asked no proving nor price, a country
Sunny for play, for spring manœuvres.
Woman, ask no more of me;
Chill not the blood with jealous feud:
This is a separate country now,
Will pay respects but no tribute.
Demand no atavistic rites,
Preference in trade or tithe of grain;
Bound by the limiting matrix I
Increased you once, will not again.
My vision’s patented, my plant
Set up, my constitution whole;
New fears, old tunes cannot induce
Nostalgia of the sickly soul.
Would you prolong your day, transfuse
Young blood into your veins? Beware
Lest one oppressed by autumn’s weight
May thrill to feel death in the air.
Let love be like a natural day
That folds her work and takes to bed;
Ploughland and tree stand out in black,
Enough memorial for the dead.
9
Second Defendant speaks
Let us now praise famous men,
Not your earth-shakers, not the dynamiters,
But who in the Home Counties or the Khyber,
Trimming their nails to meet an ill wind,
Facing the Adversary with a clean collar,
Justified the system.
Admire the venerable pile that bred them,
Bones are its foundations,
The pinnacles are stone abstractions,
Whose halls are whispering-galleries designed
To echo voices of the past, dead tongues.
White hopes of England here
Are taught to rule by learning to obey,
Bend over before vested interests,
Kiss the rod, salute the quarter-deck;
Here is no savage discipline
Of peregrine swooping, of fire destroying,
But a civil code; no capital offender
But the cool cad, the man who goes too far.
Ours the curriculum
Neither of building birds nor wasteful waters,
Bound in book not violent in vein:
Here we inoculate with dead ideas
Against blood-epidemics, against
The infection of faith and the excess of life.
Our methods are up to date; we teach
Through head and not by heart,
Language with gramophones and sex with charts,
Prophecy by deduction, prayer by numbers.
For honours see prospectus: those who leave us
Will get a post and pity the poor;
Their eyes glaze at strangeness;
They are never embarrassed, have a word for everything,
Living on credit, dying when the heart stops;
Will wear black armlets and stand a moment in silence
For the passing of an era, at their own funeral.
10
You’ll be leaving soon and it’s up to you, boys,
Which shall it be? You must make your choice.
There’s a war on, you know. Will you take your stand
In obsolete forts or in no-man’s-land?
That ancestral castle, that picturesque prestige
Looks well on paper but will it stand a siege?
All modern conveniences – still, I should change
Position now the enemy knows the range.
Blockade may begin before you’re much older –
Will you tighten the belt and shrug the shoulder
Or plough up the playing-fields, sow new soil,
Build a reservoir and bore for oil?
‘Take a sporting chance’, they tell you. But will it suffice
To wear a scrum-cap against falling skies?
‘Play the game’: but supposing the other chap kicks,
You’d like to have learnt some rough-house tricks.
It boils down to this – do you really want to win
Or prefer the fine gesture of giving in?
Are you going to keep or to make the rules,
Die with fighters or be dead with fools?
Men are wanted who will volunteer
To go aloft and cut away tangled gear;
Break through to blocked galleries below pit-head,
Get in touch with living and raise from the dead:
Men to catch spies, fly aeroplanes,
Harrow derelict acres and mend the drains.
There’ll be work for you all if you’re fain without feigning
> To give up toys and go into training.
But you’ll have to forget a great deal you’ve learnt,
The licence of Saturn, lacerations of Lent,
Self-abuse, your dignity, the Bad and the Good,
Heroism in phantasy and fainting at blood.
And you’ll have to remember a great deal you’ve forgotten,
How to love a girl and how to sew a button,
Tiger’s shock-tactics, elephant’s defence,
The integral spirit and the communal sense.
Can you sing at your work? Enforce discipline
Without insignia? Then you’ve still a chance to win.
11
Third Defendant speaks
I have always acted for the best.
My business is the soul: I have given it rope,
Coaxed it heavenward, but would not let it escape me.
The peoples have sought a Ruler:
I conjured one for each after his own image;
For savage a Dark Demon, for Hebrew a Patriot,
For Christian a Comforter, for atheist a Myth.
The rulers have sought an Ally:
I have called down thunders on the side of authority,
Lightnings to galvanize the law;
Promising the bread of heaven to the hungry of earth,
Shunting the spirit into grassy sidings,
I have served the temporal princes.
There have been men ere now, disturbers of the peace,
Leaders out of my land of milk and honey,
Prescribing harder diet;
Whom I thrashed, outlawed, slew, or if persisting
Deified, shelving them and their dynamite doctrines
Up in the clouds out of the reach of children.
I have always acted for the best:
Hung on the skirts of progress, the tail of revolution,
Ready to drug the defeated and bless the victor.
I am a man apart
Who sits in the dark professing a revelation:
Exploiting the Word with the letter I turn
Joy into sacraments, the Holy Ghost to a formula.
But an impious generation is here,
Let in the light, melt down my mysteries,
Commission the moon to serve my altars
And make my colleagues village entertainers.
That tree of Grace, for years I have tended,
Is a slow-grower, not to be transplanted,
They’ll cut it down for pit-props;
Complete Poems Page 11
