One thought that comes to mind is how to mind the gap
between the world that Auden viewed in ’46
and ours. There was a sense back then the map
might be redrawn to take in post-war politics
both literally and metaphorically.
Our sense now is that we’re in such a fix
the wars we fight are best described as pre-,
since we’re not technically “at war” in Afghanistan,
Iraq, or Libya (where our involvement will be
“brief,” our best President assures us as best he can.)
He also told us Guantánamo would be shut
but it’s as Guantanamobama they’ll spray can
his name should Guantánamo linger as a smut
on corn-fed mid-America and our collective soul,
much like the detention centers with their plywood huts
in which the Japanese were left hanging like scrolls
through World War II. Auden would surely be dismayed
by how Arnold no longer means Matthew on the whole
but Schwarzenegger, who claims that when he played
the “sport” of bodybuilding he used steroids
not for muscle growth but muscle “maintenance.” Having weighed
in before now on the deaths of Yeats and Freud,
Auden would surely want to comment on how shame
has rushed in to fill the unavoidable void
left by compulsive hoarders, losers in every game
from weight loss through loss of face on Facebook
to the housewives who give up their embroidery frames
to embroider the truth with a barbed hook.
Where taloned celebrity has broken up with talent
as in the case of Snooki cocking a snook
at Mavis Cheek and Mavis Gallant
and publishing a tell-all disguised as a freakin’ novel
perhaps the time has come not to try to upset the balance
of low and high where hotel morphs to hovel
but find as Shakespeare found, as Aristophanes found,
that the space where the so-called groundlings grovel
is, in fact, a no less consecrated ground
than the king’s seat, the bishop’s throne, the podium
from which commencement speakers get to sound
off on high fructose corn syrup, low sodium,
and the outmoded hierarchy of academic costume.
Before you turn on me with your odium
theologicum and vote me off the island from the powder room
I urge you to follow your hunches
that noms de guerre are indeed noms de plume
and embrace in your writing high colonics, low punches,
a regard for two-bit shaves and haircuts, for getting back late
from three-martini lunches,
a total disdain for the totally disdaining fourth estate
unless it’s to join it as a fifth column,
to be at sixes and sevens in shooting craps or behind the eight
in rooting for both Gilgamesh and Gollum,
in warding off the latest offensive by Google
on copyright (unless it’s held by them). These, then, are my solemn
admonitions for our “solemnitie” (bugle
and drum roll, please): think outside the frame
unless you’re a photographer; be frugal
in everything but praise; never jump a small claim;
always write “some pig” of the least porker
in the barnyard; remember those who fly far look like fair game;
refuse to pay corkage; make every line a corker;
let your main tactic be tact
and—one constant, if I may—read The New Yorker.