Where We Are
Verse five
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden
I am a fan of the ordinary, life with a manageable rhythm. I know such interludes are short lived. Beyond the boundary lies the potential news of a cancer diagnosis, a crippling computer hack, the unwelcome onset of an aging body, etc. Who of us does not cling, white knuckled, to his average day? We are implicated in a vast conspiracy. “Lights, music, the band must play on…!.” This morning I heard a snippet of a report of the Trump victory rally held in a Florida town yesterday. I thought of the Roman custom of holding a “triumph” for a returning victorious general.
On the day of his triumph, the general wore a crown of laurel and the all-purple, gold-embroidered triumphal toga picta (“painted” toga), regalia that identified him as near-divine or near-kingly, and even was known to paint his face red. He rode in a four-horse chariot through the streets of Rome in unarmed procession with his army, captives, and the spoils of his war. ….. Inevitably, the triumph offered extraordinary opportunities for self-publicity. Wikipedia
A young male attendee at the Trump rally was quoted saying, “He is a businessman, and that ought to count for some good things to come, having a businessman run the country.”
Yes, this country of ours may look like a home, a place for commodious habitation. But it is a fort, a society under siege. We are lost, afraid, and we have never been happy or good.
