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W H Auden - Horae Canonicae: Compline
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    Now, as desire and the things desired
    Cease to require attention,
    As, seizing its chance, the body escapes,
    Section by section, to join
    Plants in their chaster peace which is more
    To its real taste, now a day is its past,
    Its last deed and feeling in, should come
    The instant of recollection
    When the whole thing makes sense: it comes, but all
    I recall are doors banging,
    Two housewives scolding, an old man gobbling
    A child`s wild look of envy,
    Actions, words, that could fit any tale,
    And I fail to see either plot
    Or meaning; I cannot remember
    A thing between noon and three.

    Nothing is with me now but a sound,
    A heart`s rhythm, a sense of stars
    Leisurely walking around, and both
    Talk a language of motion
    I can measure but not read: maybe
    My heart is confessing her part
    In what happened to us from noon till three, 
    That constellations indeed
    Sing of some hilarity beyond
    All liking and happening,
    But, knowing I neither know what they know
    Nor what I ought to know, scorning
    All vain fornications of fancy,
    Now let me, blessing them both
    For the sweetness of their cassations,
    Accept our separations.

    A stride from now will take me into dream,
    Leave me, without a status,
    Among its unwashed tribes of wishes
    Who have no dances and no jokes
    But a magic cult to propitiate
    What happens from noon till three,
    Odd rites which they hide from me - should I chance,
    Say, on youths in an oak-wood
    Insulting a white deer, bribes nor threats
    Will get them to blab - and then
    Past untruth is one step to nothing,
    For the end, for me as for cities,
    Is total absence: what comes to be
    Must go back into non-being
    For the sake of the equity, the rhythm
    Past measure or comprehending.

    Can poets (can men in television)
    Be saved? It is not easy
    To believe in unknowable justice
    Or pray in the name of a love
    Whose name one`s forgotten: libera
    Me, libera C (dear C)
    And all poor s-o-b`s who never
    Do anything properly, spare
    Us in the youngest day when all are
    Shaken awake, facts are facts,
    (And I shall know exactly what happened
    Today between noon and three)
    That we, too, may come to the picnic
    With nothing to hide, join the dance
    As it moves in perichoresis,
    Turns about the abiding tree.
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