All the others translate: the painter sketches

A visible world to love or reject;

Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches

The images out that hurt and connect.

From Life to Art by painstaking adaption

Relying on us to cover the rift;

Only your notes are pure contraption,

Only your song is an absolute gift.

 

Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading

The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine,

Our climate of silence and doubt invading;

You, alone, alone, O imaginary song,

Are unable to say an existence is wrong,

And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.

 

W.H.Auden, Composer