Mundus et Infans

Mundus et Infans

 - W.H. Auden

Kicking his mother until she let go his soul

Has given him a healthy appetite: clearly, her role

     In the New Order must be

To supply and deliver his raw materials free;

     Should there be any shortage,

She will be held responsible; she also promises

To show him all such attentions as befit his age.

Having dictated peace,

With one fist clenched behind his head, heel drawn up to thigh,

The cocky little ogre dozes off, ready,

      Though, to take on the rest

Of the world at the drop of a hat or the mildest

     Nudge of the impossible.

Resolved, cost what it may, to seize supreme power and

Sworn to resist tyranny to the death with all

     Forces at his command.

A pantheist not a solipsist, he co-operates

With a universe of large and noisy feeling-states

     Without troubling to place

Them anywhere special, for, to his eyes, Funnyface

     Or Elephant as yet

Mean nothing.  His distinction between Me and Us

Is a matter of taste; his seasons are Dry and Wet;

     He thinks as his mouth does.

Still his loud iniquity is still what only the

Greatest of saints become-someone who does not lie:

     He because he cannot

Stop the vivid present to think, they by having got

     Past reflection into

A passionate obedience in time.  We have our Boy-

Meets-Girl era of mirrors and muddle to work through,

Without rest, without joy.

Therefore we love him because his judgements are so

Frankly subjective that his abuse carries no

     Personal sting.  We should

Never dare offer our helplessness as a good

     Bargain, without at least

Promising to overcome a misfortune we blame

History or Banks or the Weather for: but this beast

     Dares to exist without shame.

Let his praise our Creator with the top of his voice,

Then, and the motions of his bowels; let us rejoice

     That he lets us hope, for

He may never become a fashionable or

     Important personage:

However bad he may be, he has not yet gone mad;

Whoever we are now, we were no worse at his age;

     So of course we ought to be glad

When he bawls the house down.  Has he not a perfect right

To remind us at every moment how we quite

     Rightly expect each other

To go upstairs or for a walk if we must cry over

     Split milk, such as our wish

That, since, apparently, we shall never be above

Either or both, we had never learned to distinguish

     Between hunger and love?