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The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Tomorrow is D-Day and although I could not find the poem by Auden that I was looking for, this one seemed so right.

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Does he still think about her
Why there was never really any doubt
Every time he lights a candle
Or blows a candle out
The scientific nature of the ordinary man
Is to go on out and do the best you can
I don't think that you know
That I think you don't know
That old barometer goes crazy baby
Every time it starts to snow
You won't find me walking
Round your part of town
Humidity built the snowman
Sunshine brought him down
This world is full of people
They never seem to fall
Somebody said they seen you
You hadn't changed at all
The fundamental story
Of the contemporary man
Is to walk away and someday understand
I don't think that you know
That I think you don't know
That old barometer goes crazy baby
Every time it starts to snow
You won't find me walking
Round your part of town
Humidity built the snowman
Sunshine brought him down
The scientific nature of the ordinary man
Is to go on out and do the best you can
I don't think that you know
That I think you don't know
That old barometer goes crazy baby
Every time it starts to snow
You won't find me walking
Round your part of town
Humidity built the snowman
Sunshine brought him down
Humidity built the snowman
Sunshine brought him down
Brought him down

john prine

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Wow, dys. I love that!

There's no business like snow business and no people like snow people. Razz

I was trying to find "Lunch on Omaha Beach" and I thought it was by Auden. Confused

Who is this John Prine? (Gawd, don't make me look it up) Rolling Eyes

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Then one day you wake to find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

Unknown Citizen...poor vanilla bastard......

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The race doesn't necessarily belong to the swift, Bi. Often times, slow and steady, gets us ready.

Poor vanilla bastard? hmmmmmmmmmm. Thinking about that.

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This guy sounds like he walked down one narrow path, towing the party line all his life.

A decent man for sure, but you can be decent and still explore a lot of interesting side trails. That's what makes life interesting.

Just my impression and opinion.

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Bi, of course. I understand what you are saying about side roads. I chose the poem for the sake of one line: "...and when there was war he went".

Since war is glorified by the heroes, either contrived or real, it's really about the vanilla victims.

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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

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I taught that poem, dys. Jarrell didn't pussyfoot around, did he. kids always had a tough time understanding the first line. One of my biggest fears is that somehow the draft will be reinstated.

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Ah, I see, Letty, and I agree with you. I also think that line is a total condemnation of the man's character.

You have to stand for something or what's the point, wouldn't you agree.

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Yes, Bi. I do agree. Some people are so busy making a living, that they never make any money. Smile

And then there are those who are "defeated by diffidence" who end up among the missing.

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Good afternoon Letty and all,

I just read this complete topic/ w/ replies, and it was WORTH IT.

The poem by Auden is so descriptive of working men I have both met and read about. Simple, decent men- (who, unlike BPB Laughing

), choose to have no extracurricular/exhausting/excitement in their life.

I like your little poem, Bi-Polar Bear, and understand your impressions.

And the john prine lyrics posted by Dyslexia are fantastic!
Don't you think it conveys the fact that these ORDINARY people have 'other sides' that --- 'I don't think you know that I think you don't know....'

Sure as shootin', the 'quiet man' is usually up to something Laughing

.

They're not ALWAYS spending days just marking 'time' and being BORED, Ms. Letty- sometimes, money is NOT the object.

I LIKE the poem, and I did look for Lunch on Omaha Beach, but I did not have any idea who or what I was looking for. If I ever read it, I have forgotton. What did it have to do with D-Day??

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Oh jackie, were that my own little poem. those are Pink Floyd lyrics from "Dark Side Of The Moon" Had I written them and shared in even part of the royalties from that album I would not be posting to A2K today, I would be in the middle of a world adventure cruise, the kind where you go to places and do things that might sure enough kill you.

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Jackie, Omaha Beach was a code name for the combine forces of the allies in WWII to stage an out and out assault on the Germans who then occupied France. The book, The Longest Day is fantastic and and gives individual accounts of different soldiers engaged in the operation.

Auden (surely that's who it was) claimed that the site of bloody battles, such as this, should never be reclaimed, but left as they were, a grim reminder of just what war does.

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Thank you for telling me Letty. I saw a movie, THE LONGEST DAY,
but I did not read a book of that name. Usually, a book is much longer remembered than a movie.

If you ever find it, I would like you to post it. OK?

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BPB,

I thought the 'lyric' sounded familiar. But it is so like your
"conversation" I thought you may have penned it....
You crack me up with your adventures--
Thanx for being fun.

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I ran across this one Letty, and I have read it over and over.
It just occured to me, I wish georgeob1 would read this, if I posted it in Politics.
Oh 'sigh', but I wont.
Probably no one sees in the poetry what I see in it.

WH Auden

A Walk After Dark

A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day
The clockwork spectacle is
Impressive in a slightly boring
Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shamelesss a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead

Now, unready to die
Bur already at the stage
When one starts to resent the young,
I am glad those points in the sky
May also be counted among
The creatures of middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which
The classical authors wrote,
Only the young and rich
Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.

Occuring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may already have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgment waits
My person, all my friends,
And these United States.

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More goose bumps, Jackie. Incidentally, the movie. The Longest Day was from the book by the same name.

I'm gonna find that poem "Lunch on Omaha Beach"! Evil or Very Mad

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