that song and sugar and fire

I have been reading Auden, today.

The aged catch their breath,
For the nonchalant couple go
Waltzing across the tightrope
As if there were no death
Or hope of falling down;
The wounded cry as the clown
Doubles his meaning, and O
How the dear little children laugh
When the drums roll and lovely
Lady is sawn in half.

O what authority gives
Existence its surprise?
Science is happy to answer
That the ghosts who haunt our lives
Are handy with mirrors and wire,
That song and sugar and fire,
Courage and come-hither eyes
Have a genius for taking pains.
But how does one think up a habit?
Our wonder, our terror remains.

Art opens the fishiest eye
To the Flesh and the Devil who heat
The Chamber of Temptation
Where heroes roar and die.
We are wet with sympathy now;
Thanks for the evening; but how
Shall we satisfy when we meet,
Between Shall-I and I-Will,
The lion's mouth whose hunger
No metaphors can fill?

Well, who in his backyard
Has not opened his heart to the smiling
Secret he cannot quote?
Which goes to show that the Bard
Was sober when he wrote
That this world of face we love
Is unsubstantial stuff:
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.

~W.H. Auden, "Preface (The STAGE MANAGER to the Critics)" from The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest, August 1942-February 1944. I adore The Sea and the Mirror, and highly encourage you all to read the rest of it, even (especially) the pages and pages of Caliban prose-poetry.

While I am here, have a few of my favorite bits of Academic Graffiti, which is really too long and too ridiculous to post all of, but occasionally full of extraordinary hilarity and brilliance:

For example:

No one could ever inveigle
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.

Or, my very, very favorite:

Thomas the Rhymer
Was probably a social climber:
He should have known Fairy Queens
Were beyond his means.

And then of course, no academic graffiti is complete without:

Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled
When into the Cafe Royal walked Bosie
Wearing a tea-cosy.

Or, indeed without a Limerick:

To get the Last Poems of Yeats,
You need not mug up on dates;
All a reader requires
Is some knowledge of gyres
And the sort of people he hates.

Auden is frequently sublime, and I love him for it, but anyone who can rhyme Thackeray and daiquiri gets points for sheer style.

In other news, it was a good birthday. Quiet and mostly cake-free (although I ate a lot of yesterday's chocolate chip muffins and took myself out to lunch), but it also involved going to see "17 Again" with Bex (whose birthday it was also), and Melanie and Terri, and can I just say, that was the BEST RIDICULOUS ZAC EFRON MOVIE TO SEE ON MY BIRTHDAY EVER. Seriously, it had me from the basketball dance routine. We think basketball dance routines may actually be in Zefron's contract. Immortal moments also include: "Bedazzled with RHINESTONES" and "You can plunder my dungeon anytime."