A poem for the everyday
The poet W.H. Auden wrote For The Time Being — A Christmas Oratorio in 1941 and 1942 when the world desperately wanted a glimpse of hope to sustain it in a time of darkness. On the face of it, the poem is about Christmas but it's about many other things, especially the human need for intimacy. An excerpt:
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.W. H. Auden (1907-1973)
This excerpt from For The Time Being — A Christmas Oratorio captures the post-Christmas blues with humour and honesty, and ties the lot to how we try to make sense of the world. The poem was written soon after Auden had converted to Christianity and as he looks at the excitement of the holidays he concludes that God is more in the everyday than in Christmas Day.
