---

W H Auden - Horae Canonicae: Sext
Work rating: Low

    I
    You need not see what someone is doing
    to know if it is his vocation,

    you have only to watch his eyes:
    a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

    making a primary incision,
    a clerk completing a bill of lading,

    wear the same rapt expression,
    forgetting themselves in a function.

    How beautiful it is,
    that eye-on-the-object look.

    To ignore the appetitive goddesses,
    to desert the formidable shrines

    of Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, Diana,
    to pray instead to St. Phocas,
    St Barbara, San Saturnino, 
    or whoever one`s patron is,

    that one may be worthy of their mystery, 
    what a prodigious step to have taken.

    There should be monuments, there should be odes, 
    to the nameless heroes who took it first,

    to the first flaker of flints 
    who forgot his dinner,

    the first collector of sea-shells 
    to remain celibate.

    Where should we be but for them?
    Feral still, un-housetrained, still

    wandering through forests without 
    a consonant to our names,

    slaves of Dame Kind, lacking 
    all notion of a city

    and, at this noon, for this death, 
    there would be no agents.

    II
    You need not hear what orders he is giving 
    to know if someone has authority,

    you have only to watch his mouth:
    when a besieging general sees


    a city wall breached by his troops, 
    when a bacteriologist

    realizes in a flash what was wrong 
    with his hypothesis when,

    from a glance at the jury, the prosecutor 
    knows the defendant will hang,

    their lips and the lines around them 
    relax, assuming an expression

    not of simple pleasure at getting
    their own sweet way but of satisfaction

    at being right, an incarnation
    of Fortitudo, Justicia, Nous.

    You may not like them much 
    (Who does?) but we owe them

    basilicas, divas,
    dictionaries, pastoral verse,

    the courtesies of the city:
    without these judicial mouths

    (which belong for the most part 
    to very great scoundrels)

    how squalid existence would be, 
    tethered for life to some hut village,


    afraid of the local snake 
    or the local ford demon

    speaking the local patois
    of some three hundred words

    (think of the family squabbles and the 
    poison-pens, think of the inbreeding)

    at this noon, there would be no authority 
    to command this death.

    III
    Anywhere you like, somewhere
    on broad-chested life-giving Earth,

    anywhere between her thirstlands 
    and undrinkable Ocean,

    the crowd stands perfectly still,
    its eyes (which seem one) and its mouths

    (which seem infinitely many) 
    expressionless, perfectly blank.

    The crowd does not see (what everyone sees) 
    a boxing match, a train wreck,

    a battleship being launched,
    does not wonder (as everyone wonders)

    who will win, what flag she will fly, 
    how many will be burned alive,

    is never distracted
    (as everyone is always distracted)

    by a barking dog, a smell of fish, 
    a mosquito on a bald head:

    the crowd sees only one thing 
    (which only the crowd can see)

    an epiphany of that
    which does whatever is done.

    Whatever god a person believes in, 
    in whatever way he believes,

    (no two are exactly alike)
    as one of the crowd he believes

    and only believes in that
    in which there is only one way of believing.

    Few people accept each other and most
    will never do anything properly,

    but the crowd rejects no one, joining the crowd 
    is the only thing all men can do.

    Only because of that can we say 
    all men are our brothers,

    superior, because of that,
    to the social exoskeletons: When

    have they ever ignored their queens, 
    for one second stopped work

    on their provincial cities, to worship 
    The Prince of this world like us,

    at this noon, on this hill,
    in the occasion of this dying.
Source
The script ran 0.002 seconds.