savaşın faturası

• şair w h auden'in bu şiiri savaşın faturasını iyi açıklar, kayda değerdir.
  
  september 1, 1939
  
  i sit in one of the dives
  on fifty-second street
  uncertain and afraid
  as the clever hopes expire
  of a low dishonest decade:
  waves of anger and fear
  circulate over the bright
  and darkened lands of the earth,
  obsessing our private lives;
  the unmentionable odour of death
  offends the september night.
  
  accurate scholarship can
  unearth the whole offence
  from luther until now
  that has driven a culture mad,
  find what occurred at linz,
  what huge imago made
  a psychopathic god:
  i and the public know
  what all schoolchildren learn,
  those to whom evil is done
  do evil in return.
  
  exiled thucydides knew
  all that a speech can say
  about democracy,
  and what dictators do,
  the elderly rubbish they talk
  to an apathetic grave;
  analysed all in his book,
  the enlightenment driven away,
  the habit-forming pain,
  mismanagement and grief:
  we must suffer them all again.
  
  into this neutral air
  where blind skyscrapers use
  their full height to proclaim
  the strength of collective man,
  each language pours its vain
  competitive excuse:
  but who can live for long
  in an euphoric dream;
  out of the mirror they stare,
  imperialism's face
  and the international wrong.
  
  faces along the bar
  cling to their average day:
  the lights must never go out,
  the music must always play,
  all the conventions conspire
  to make this fort assume
  the furniture of home;
  lest we should see where we are,
  lost in a haunted wood,
  children afraid of the night
  who have never been happy or good.
  
  the windiest militant trash
  important persons shout
  is not so crude as our wish:
  what mad nijinsky wrote
  about diaghilev
  is true of the normal heart;
  for the error bred in the bone
  * of each woman and each man
  craves what it cannot have,
  not universal love
  but to be loved alone. *
  
  from the conservative dark
  into the ethical life
  the dense commuters come,
  repeating their morning vow;
  "i will be true to the wife,
  i'll concentrate more on my work,"
  and helpless governors wake
  to resume their compulsory game:
  who can release them now,
  who can reach the deaf,
  who can speak for the dumb?
  
  all i have is a voice
  to undo the folded lie,
  the romantic lie in the brain
  of the sensual man-in-the-street
  and the lie of authority
  whose buildings grope the sky:
  there is no such thing as the state
  and no one exists alone;
  hunger allows no choice
  to the citizen or the police;
  we must love one another or die.
  
  defenceless under the night
  our world in stupor lies;
  yet, dotted everywhere,
  ironic points of light
  flash out wherever the just
  exchange their messages:
  may i, composed like them
  of eros and of dust,
  beleaguered by the same
  negation and despair,
  show an affirming flame.
  
  w.h. auden