Endymion : A Response to ‘The Shield of Achielles’ by W.H. Auden

Somoshree Palit

 

She glanced upon his face 

For Cupid’s manna-dew 

Sweet blossoms in their blush 

Blooming fresh and new 

But there on his moist brows 

Her pansied eyes beheld 

An agonized pacifism 

A violent smile that yelled. 

 

A laboratory of science, plain and white 

Anxious vicious forms, some nervous laugh 

Bending over a foundation of fright 

As sobbing eyes pleaded, “Enough, enough!” 

A million mouths, gaping, wires and stuff: 

Those flesh were subjects, unable to fend 

The fate of a nation unaware of it’s end. 

 

A joyful contraption of a frenzied joy 

Parade down a land, a land bare and brown. 

Nightly howls — wintry dogs chewing a toy : 

A soft white limb for which Hunger sat down. 

Gobbled limbs with dogs, a cannibal frown 

Crossed his face. Was that food, or some skin 

That killed him, his poems, and the pulse within? 

 

She glanced upon his face 

For starry climes of night, 

Marble Gods of Rome 

The burning Northern light. 

But on his deep repose 

Where the altar raised so high, 

She saw her lucent rays 

Weep his urge to die. 

 

The ruins of a graph in lolling flames arose, 

Little humans, un-pragmatic, and all 

All lamps of art, unpractical, were to close — 

Too catastrophic a rise, defined to fall. 

Survival’s an unmitigated call. 

Where homage to Ianthe is a harlot’s dream 

There is no Lucy, but her violated scream. 

 

When all forms of love, faith, hope and art 

Discarded, dejected, deflowered and dead 

Rise from their graves, flesh and bones apart, 

Would you answer, in lieu of all wine and bread? 

Would you then leave your ‘practical’ silken bed, 

Stare the murdered in their eyes, say you thrive, 

Say, animals never needed songs to survive? 

 

The shamed Gods in skies 

Turned away in fear 

Selene of the shining night 

Kissed her lover dear. 

The world shut in sleep 

Night palled their eyes, 

Bedewed the auburn curls 

Of gagged Endymion’s  cries.