Auden is, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest of all poets whose entire life-span was contained by the boundaries of the twentieth century. His references to animals are fewer, say, than those of Ted Hughes — but Hughes has a grim, thoroughly unsentimental detachment that I find a little terrifying. Auden’s reference to the “sinless world” of a sleeping dachsund shows up in his marvelous “Love Feast”, which was a Thursday Short Poem in December ‘04.
Auden wrote this poem in the summer of 1973, just months before he died. It is much less often anthologized than many of his works, but it is one of my favorites — even if I vigorously dispute his contention that animals are unconscious of God.
Address to the Beasts
For us who, from the moment
we first are worlded
lapse into disarray,
who seldom know exactly
what we are up to,
and, as a rule, don’t want to,
what a joy to know,
even when we can’t see or hear you,
that you are around,
though very few of you
find us worth looking at,
unless we come too close.
To you all scents are sacred
except our smell and those
we manufacture.
How promptly and ably
you execute Nature’s policies
and are never
lured into misconduct
except by some unlucky
chance imprinting.
Endowed from birth with good manners
you wag no snobbish elbows,
don’t leer,
don’t look down your nostrils
nor poke them into another
creature’s business.
Your own habitations
are cosy and private, not
pretentious temples.
Of course, you have to take lives
to keep your own, but never
kill for applause.
Compared with even your greediest
how Non-U
our hunting gentry seem.
Exempt from taxation,
you have never felt the need
to become literate,
but your oral cultures
have inspired our poets to pen
dulcet verses,
and, though unconscious of God,
your Sung Eucharists are
more hallowed than ours.
Instinct is commonly said
to rule you; I would call it
Common Sense.
If you cannot engender
a genius like Mozart,
neither can you
plague the earth
with brilliant sillies like Hegel
or clever nasties like Hobbes.
Shall we ever become adulted
as you all soon do?
It seems unlikely.
Indeed, one balmy day,
we might well become,
not fossils, but vapour.
Distinct now,
in the end we shall join you
(how soon all corpses look alike),
but you exhibit no signs
of knowing that you are sentenced.
Now that could be why
we upstarts are often
jealous of your innocence
but never envious?
Oh wow. Now I’m going back to my motel room where Little White Canine is waiting for me. He’s in for a big hug and smooch …