vendredi, poésie

"You," WH Auden (1960)

       

Really, must you,
        Over-familiar
        Dense companion,
        Be there always?
        The bond between us
        Is chimerical surely:
        Yet I cannot break it.

       

Must I, born for
        Sacred play,
        Turn base mechanic
        So you may worship
        Your secular bread,
        With no thought
        Of the value of time?

       

Thus far I have known your
        Character only
        From its pleasanter side,
        But you know I know
        A day will come
        When you grow savage
        And hurt me badly.

Totally stupid?
        Would that you were:
        But, no, you plague me
        With tastes I was fool enough
        Once to believe in.
        Bah!, blockhead:
        I know where you learned them.

       

Can I trust you even
        On creaturely fact?
        I suspect strongly
        You hold some dogma
        Or positive truth,
        And feed me fictions:
        I shall never prove it.

       

Oh, I know how you came by
        A sinner's cranium,
        How between two glaciers
        The master-chronometer
        Of an innocent primate
        Altered its tempi:
        That explains nothing.

       

Who tinkered and why?
        Why am I certain,
        Whatever your faults are,
        The fault is mine,
        Why is loneliness not
        A chemical discomfort,
        Nor Being a smell?

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