Compline by W. H. Auden

Compline

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.