DETECTIVE STORY

Who is ever quite without his landscape,

The straggling village street, the house in trees,

All near the church? Or else, the gloomy town-house,

The one with the Corinthian pillars, or

The tiny workmanlike flat, in any case

A home, a centre where the three or four things

That happen to a man do happen?

Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in

The country station where he meets his loves

And says good-bye, continually, mark the spot

Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

 

An unknown tramp? A magnate? An enigma always,

With a well-buried past: and when the truth,

The truth about our hapiness comes out,

How much it owed to blakmail and philandering.

 

What follows is habitual. Al goes to plan:

The feud between the local common sense

And intuition, that exasperating amateur

Who's always on the spot by chance before us;

All goes to plan, both lying and confession,

Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.

 

Yet, on the last page, a lingering doubt:

The verdict, was it just? The judge's nerves,

That clue, that protestation from the gallows,

And our own smile... why, yes...

 

But time is always guilty. Someone must pay for

Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.

 

W. H. Auden 

publicado por RAA às 15:42 | comentar | favorito