You

Aunque suene raro no podría explicar porqué me gusta tanto leer a Auden, sólo sé que gozo leerlo y leerlo y leerlo, tampoco sé porqué me da por leerlo en otoño, y a pesar de que este otoño parece más invierno, no lo muevo de mi cabecera...

Really, must you,

Over-familiar

Dense companion,

Be there always?

The bond between us

Is chimerical surely:

Yet I cannot break it.

***

Must I, born for

Sacred play,

Turn base mechanic

So you many worship

Your secular bread,

With mo thought

Of the value of time?

***

Thus far I have known your

Character only

From its pleasanter side,

But you know I know

A day will come

When you grow savage

And hurt me badly.

***

Totally stupid?

Would that you were:

But, no, you plague me

With tastes I was fool enough

Once to believe in.

Bah!, blockhead:

I know where you learned them.

***

Can I trust you even

On creaturely fact?

I suspect strongly

You hold some dogma

Of positive truth,

And feed me fictions:

I shall never prove it.

***

Oh, I know how you came by

A sinner’s cranium,

How between two glaciers

The master-chronometer

Of an innocent primate

Altered its tempi:

That explains nothing.

***

Who tinkered and why?

Why an I certain,

Whatever your faults are,

The fault is mine,

Why is loneliness not

A chemical discomfort,

Nor Being a smell?

September 1960