The Hill Country
A POEM
Take for instance Mary; she
shocked by some divine insistence.
Yet the experience of God,
the mere feel of him was itself not enough.
To tell it
to tell it
to shape the noun & verb of it
the imperative.
This God then
not a solipsism, not
the falling of one tree
in the silence of a forest.
Thus you ask:
why write?
Ask rather: Mary
why did you make such haste
through the hill country
— always through the hill country —
and why to Elizabeth
barren as a winter field?
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Enveil God’s face, winged seraphim
Before the dazzling throne:
The onyx clouds cannot hide Him
…Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.
Who is this alive from heaven, hidden
Beneath the Church’s bread,
Who comes in sacramental…