Refugee Blues: W.H. Auden

I was recommending this poem to audrawilliams earlier tonight, and it's stuck in my head now. It's frequently stuck in my head, actually.


Refugee Blues by WH Auden


Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead";
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread";
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: "They must die";
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

Tracing one warm line...

So it has suddenly occured to me that I have not one, but TWO, very different, songs about Franklin's ill fated final expedition. This is the sort of co-incidence which, in my rather fuzzy tired state, seems to positively demand a music post.


Lord Franklin, Pentangle.

Northwest Passage, Stan Rogers.

And a Gratuitous Winter Shipwreck Song:
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitgerald, Gordon Lightfoot.

And a few short passages from South With Scott, as I am always quoting it at people, especially when travelling:


This dreadful blizzard was a terrific blow to Oates. He of all men set
himself to better the ponies' state during the bad weather. The animals
lost condition with a rapidity that was horrible to observe. The cutting
wind whirling the sleet round the ponies gave them a very sorry time, but
whenever one peeped out of the tent door there was Oates, wet to the
skin, trying to keep life in his charges. I think the poor soldier
suffered as much as the ponies. He had felt that every time he re-entered
his tent (which was also Captain Scott's) that he took in more wet snow
and helped to increase the general discomfort. This being the case when
he went out to the ponies, he stopped out, and kept his vigil crouching
behind a drifted up pony-wall. We others could not help laughing at him,
after the blizzard, when he wrung the icy water out of his clothing. His
personal bag was in a fearful state, his sodden tobacco had discoloured
everything, and as he squeezed his spare socks and gloves a stream of
nicotine-stained water flowed out. I am unable to reproduce his
observations on the subject--they were dry, picturesque, and to the
point, and even our bluejackets, who were none too particular about
language, looked at Oates with undisguised astonishment at the length and
variety of his emergency vocabulary.


Generally their diet consisted of one mug of "pemmican and seal hoosh"
and a biscuit for breakfast, _nothing_ for lunch, a mug and a half of
seal, one biscuit and three-quarters of a pint of thin cocoa for supper.
On Sundays weak tea was substituted for cocoa, this they re-boiled for
Mondays' supper, and the dried leaves were used for tobacco on Tuesdays.
Their only luxuries were a piece of chocolate and twelve lumps of sugar,
weekly, and twenty-five raisins apiece were kept for birthdays. One lucky
find was thirty-six fish in the stomach of a seal, which fried in blubber
proved excellent. The biscuit ration had to be stopped entirely from July
to September. The six men cooked their food in sea-water as they had no
salt, and seaweed was used as a vegetable. Priestley is reported to have
disliked it, and no wonder, for it has probably rotted in the sun for
years, and been much trampled by penguins, quite apart from anything
worse.


"November 12, 1912, Latitude 79 degrees, 50 minutes, South. This cross
and cairn are erected over the bodies of Captain Scott, C.V.O., R.N.,
Doctor E.A. Wilson, M.B., B.C., Cantab., and Lieutenant H.R. Bowers,
Royal Indian Marine--a slight token to perpetuate their successful and
gallant attempt to reach the Pole. This they did on January 17, 1912,
after the Norwegian Expedition had already done so. Inclement weather
with lack of fuel was the cause of their death. Also to commemorate
their two gallant comrades, Captain L.E.G. Oates of the Inniskilling
Dragoons, who walked to his death in a blizzard to save his comrades,
about eighteen miles south of this position; also of Seaman Edgar
Evans, who died at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. 'The Lord gave
and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'"


... and so to bed.