My Poetry: Today I Read Auden

Today I read a thin volume
Of poems by an unromantic,
Who knew love as a secret.
I found him,
Hid deep in a bookshop corner,
As I flicked through an anthology
Devised to make men cry.
I didn't. But felt his shoulder,
Frail and bony, offering a pillow
To bury my head in.
So I turned out my hungry pockets
And bought that cheap paperback
Because sometimes
Only an old man
Knows this feeling...

When the click of clock ticks
Loud as bombs.
When you can feel
The body decaying, slowly;
Flesh but a rusting machine
In odious system.
When the day favours not
The brave or foolish
But he who tastes
The bitterness of twisted fate
And does not buckle,
Just gently folds himself
Into the chair,
and waits.

I could have chosen Dylan,
Or Buckowski,
But I’m too tired to join their fight.
I could have read Heaney,
But I’m too frail for nostalgia
And besides, that boy is dead now.
I could have read Corso,
But I am too resigned
To this new landscape
To search for salvation in the horizon.
So I chose Auden,
Felt his avuncular embrace,
Felt his words fill my emptiness
Like holy wine on tongue
Because, I thought it would help
I was wrong.