Стихи и эссе

Under Which Lyre

A REACTIONARY TRACT FOR THE TIMES

(Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

     Ares at last has quit the field,
     The bloodstains on the bushes yield
        To seeping showers,
     And in their convalescent state
     The fractured towns associate
        With summer flowers.

     Encamped upon the college plain
     Raw veterans already train
        As freshman forces;
     Instructors with sarcastic tongue
     Shepherd the battle-weary young
        Through basic courses.

     Among bewildering appliances
     For mastering the arts and sciences
        They stroll or run,
     And nerves that steeled themselves to slaughter
     Are shot to pieces by the shorter
        Poems of Donne.

     Professors back from secret missions
     Resume their proper eruditions,
        Though some regret it;
     They liked their dictaphones a lot,
     They met some big wheels, and do not
        Let you forget it.

     But Zeus' inscrutable decree
     Permits the will-to-disagree
        To be pandemic,
     Ordains that vaudeville shall preach
     And every commencement speech
        Be a polemic.

     Let Ares doze, that other war
     Is instantly declared once more
        'Twixt those who follow
     Precocious Hermes all the way
     And those who without qualms obey
        Pompous Apollo.

     Brutal like all Olympic games,
     Though fought with similes and Christian names
        And less dramatic,
     This dialectic strife between
     The civil gods is just as mean,
        And more fanatic.

     What high immortals do in mirth
     Is life and death on Middle Earth;
        Their a-historic
     Antipathy forever gripes
     All ages and somatic types,
        The sophomoric

     Who face the future's darkest hints
     With giggles or with prairie squints
        As stout as Cortez,
     And those who like myself turn pale
     As we approach with ragged sail
        The fattening forties.

     The sons of Hermes love to play,
     And only do their best when they
        Are told they oughtn't;
     Apollo's children never shrink
     From boring jobs but have to think
        Their work important.

     Related by antithesis,
     A compromise between us is
        Impossible;
     Respect perhaps but friendship never:
     Falstaff the fool confronts forever
        The prig Prince Hal.

     If he would leave the self alone,
     Apollo's welcome to the throne,
        Fasces and falcons;
     He loves to rule, has always done it;
     The earth would soon, did Hermes run it,