MacNiece - Autumn Journal

Louis MacNeice A UTUMN J OURNAL First published in 1939
by Faber and Faber Limited
Note I am aware that there are over-statements in this poem - e.g. in the passages dealing with Ireland, the Oxford by-election or my own more private existence. There are also inconsistencies. If I had been writing a didactic poem proper it would have been my job to qualify or eliminate these over- statements and inconsistencies. But I was writing what I have called a Journal. In a journal or a personal letter a man writes what he feels at the moment; to attempt scientific truthfulness would be - paradoxically - dishonest.

The truth of a lyric is different from the truths of science and this poem is something half-way between the lyric and the didactic poem. In as much as it is half-way towards a didactic poem I trust that it contains some 'criticism of life' or implies some standards which are not merely personal. I was writing it from August 1938 until the New Year and have not altered any passages relating to public events in the light of what happened after the time of writing. Thus the section about Barcelona having been written before the fall of Barcelona, I should consider it dishonest to have qualified it retrospectively by my reactions to the later event. Nor am I attempting to offer what so many people now demand from poets - a final verdict or a balanced judgment. It is the nature of this poem to be neither final nor balanced.

I have certain beliefs which, I hope, emerge in the course of it but which I have refused to abstract from their context. For this reason I shall probably be called a trimmer by some and a sentimental extremist by others. But poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be 'objective' or clear-cut at the cost of honesty. L. M. March , 1939 Autumn Journal i Close and slow, summer is ending in Hampshire, Ebbing away down ramps of shaven lawn where close-clipped yew Insulates the lives of retired generals and admirals And the spyglasses hung in the hall and the prayer-books ready in the pew And August going out to the tin trumpets of nasturtiums And the sunflowers' Salvation Army blare of brass And the spinster sitting in a deck-chair picking up stitches Not raising her eyes to the noise of the 'planes that pass Northward from Lee-on-Solent.

Macrocarpa and cypress And roses on a rustic trellis and mulberry trees And bacon and eggs in a silver dish for breakfast And all the inherited assets of bodily ease And all the inherited worries, rheumatism and taxes, And whether Stella will marry and what to do with Dick And the branch of the family that lost their money in Hatry And the passing of the Morning Post and of life's climacteric And the growth of vulgarity, cars that pass the gate-lodge And crowds undressing on the beach And the hiking cockney lovers with thoughts directed Neither to God nor Nation but each to each. But the home is still a sanctum under the pelmets, All quiet on the Family Front, Farmyard noises across the fields at evening While the trucks of the Southern Railway dawdle...shunt Into poppy sidings for the night - night which knows no passion No assault of hands or tongue For all is old as flint or chalk or pine-needles And the rebels and the young Have taken the train to town or the two-seater Unravelling rails or road, Losing the thread deliberately behind them Autumnal palinode. And I am in the train too now and summer is going South as I go north Bound for the dead leaves falling, the burning bonfire, The dying that brings forth The harder life, revealing the trees' girders, The frost that kills the germs of laissez-faire; West Meon, Tisted, Farnham, Woking, Weybridge, Then London's packed and stale and pregnant air. My dog, a symbol of the abandoned order, Lies on the carriage floor, Her eyes inept and glamorous as a film star's, Who wants to live, i.e. wants more Presents, jewellery, furs, gadgets, solicitations As if to live were not Following the curve of a planet or controlled water But a leap in the dark, a tangent, a stray shot. It is this we learn after so many failures, The building of castles in sand, of queens in snow, That we cannot make any corner in life or in life's beauty, That no river is a river which does not flow.

Surbiton, and a woman gets in, painted With dyed hair but a ladder in her stocking and eyes Patient beneath the calculated lashes, Inured for ever to surprise; And the train's rhythm becomes the ad nauseam repetition Of every tired aubade and maudlin madrigal, The faded airs of sexual attraction Wandering like dead leaves along a warehouse wall: 'I loved my love with a platform ticket, A jazz song, A handbag, a pair of stockings of Paris Sand I loved her long. I loved her between the lines and against the clock, Not until death But till life did us part I loved her with paper money And with whisky on the breath. I loved her with peacock's eyes and the wares of Carthage, With glass and gloves and gold and a powder puff With blasphemy, camaraderie, and bravado And lots of other stuff. I loved my love with the wings of angels Dipped in henna, unearthly red, With my office hours, with flowers and sirens, With my budget, my latchkey, and my daily bread.' And so to London and down the ever-moving Stairs Where a warm wind blows the bodies of men together And blows apart their complexes and cares. ii Spider spider, twisting tight But the watch is wary beneath the pillow I am afraid in the web of night When the window is fingered by the shadows of branches, When the lions roar beneath the hill And the meter clicks and the cistern bubbles And the gods are absent and the men are still Noli me tangere, my soul is forfeit. Some now are happy in the hive of home, Thigh over thigh and a light in the night nursery, And some are hungry under the starry dome And some sit turning handles.

Glory to God in the Lowest, peace beneath the earth, Dumb and deaf at the nadir; I wonder now whether anything is worth The eyelid opening and the mind recalling. And I think of Persephone gone down to dark, No more a virgin, gone the garish meadow, But why must she come back, why must the snowdrop mark That life goes on for ever? There are nights when I am lonely and long for love But to-night is quintessential dark forbidding Anyone beside or below me; only above Pile high the tumulus, good-bye to starlight. Good-bye the Platonic sieve of the Carnal Man But good-bye also Plato's philosophising; I have a better plan To hit the target straight without circumlocution. If you can equate Being in its purest form With denial of all appearance, Then let me disappear - the scent grows warm For pure Not-Being, Nirvana. Only the spider spinning out his reams Of colourless thread says Only there are always Interlopers, dreams, Who let no dead dog lie nor death be final; Suggesting, while he spins, that to-morrow will outweigh To-night, that Becoming is a match for Being, That to-morrow is also a day, That I must leave my bed and face the music. As all the others do who with a grin Shake off sleep like a dog and hurry to desk or engine And the fear of life goes out as they clock in And history is reasserted.

Spidery spider, your irony is true; Who am I - or I - to demand oblivion? I must go out to-morrow as the others do And build the falling castle; Which has never fallen, thanks Not to any formula, red tape or institution, Not to any creeds or banks, But to the human animal's endless courage. Spider spider, spin Your register and let me sleep a little, Not now in order to end but to begin The task begun so often. iii August is nearly over the people Back from holiday are tanned With blistered thumbs and a wallet of snaps and a little Joie de vivre which is contraband; Whose stamina is enough to face the annual Wait for the annual spree, Whose memories are stamped with specks of sunshine Like faded