Auden, W. H.: A Lullaby

The din of work is subdued,

another day has westered

and mantling darkness arrived.

Peace! Peace! Devoid your portrait

of its vexations and rest.

Your daily round is done with,

you’ve gotten the garbage out,

answered some tiresome letters

and paid a bill by return,

all frettolosamente.

Now you have licence to lie,

naked, curled like a shrimplet,

jacent in bed, and enjoy

its cosy micro-climate:

Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

The old Greeks got it all wrong:

Narcissus is an oldie,

tamed by time, released at last

from lust for other bodies,

rational and reconciled.

For many years you envied

the hirsute, the he-man type.

No longer: now you fondle

your almost feminine flesh

with mettled satisfaction,

imagining that you are

sinless and all-sufficient,

snug in the den of yourself,

Madonna and Bambino:

Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Let your last thinks all be thanks:

praise your parents who gave you

a Super-Ego of strength

that saves you so much bother,

digit friends and dear them all,

then pay fair attribution

to your age, to having been

born when you were. In boyhood

you were permitted to meet

beautiful old contraptions,

soon to be banished from earth,

saddle-tank loks, beam-engines

and over-shot waterwheels.

Yes, love, you have been lucky:

Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Now for oblivion: let

the belly-mind take over

down below the diaphragm,

the domain of the Mothers,

They who guard the Sacred Gates,

without whose wordless warnings

soon the verbalising I

becomes a vicious despot,

lewd, incapable of love,

disdainful, status-hungry.

Should dreams haunt you, heed them not,

for all, both sweet and horrid,

are jokes in dubious taste,

too jejune to have truck with.

Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill.