And now for something completely different...

The Geography of the House

(for Christopher Isherwood)

by W.H. Auden

Seated after breakfast

In this white-tiled cabin

Arabs call the House where

Everybody goes,

Even melancholics

Raise a cheer to Mrs.

Nature for the primal

Pleasure She bestows.

Sex is but a dream to

Seventy-and-over,

But a joy proposed un-

-til we start to shave:

Mouth-delight depends on

Virtue in the cook, but

This She guarantees from

Cradle unto grave.

Lifted off the potty,

Infants from their mothers

Hear their first impartial

Words of worldly praise:

Hence, to start the morning

With a satisfactory

Dump is a good omen

All our adult days.

Revelation came to

Luther in a privy

(Crosswords have been solved there);

Rodin was no fool

When he cast his Thinker,

Cogitating deeply,

Crouched in the position

Of a man at stool.

All the arts derive from

This ur-act of making,

Private to the artist:

Makers' lives are spent

Striving in their chosen

Medium to produce a

De-narcissus-ized en-

During excrement.

Freud did not invent the

Constipated miser:

Banks have letter boxes

Built in their façade

Marked For Night Deposits,

Stocks are firm or liquid,

Currencies of nations

Either soft or hard.

Global Mother, keep our

Bowels of compassion

Open through our lifetime,

Purge our minds as well:

Grant us a kind ending,

Not a second childhood,

Petulant, weak-sphinctered,

In a cheap hotel.

Keep us in our station:

When we get pound-notish,

When we seem about to

Take up Higher Thought,

Send us some deflating

Image like the pained ex-

-pression on a Major

Prophet taken short.

(Orthodoxy ought to

Bless our modern plumbing:

Swift and St. Augustine

Lived in centuries

When a stench of sewage

Made a strong debating

Point for Manichees.)

Mind and Body run on

Different timetables:

Not until our morning

Visit here can we

Leave the dead concerns of

Yesterday behind us,

Face with all our courage

What is now to be.

Charmin' !