Parting
A POEM
Let the air be taken from me;
Let no water touch my tongue.
Though my heart and soul be riven
From the life to which I’ve clung,
Peace will make the parting easy;
Pain won’t usher in despair.
One who’s loved me from forever
Holds me always, everywhere.
Once this blow would sure have killed me.
I breathed by the spell she cast,
Drinking only wine she gave me
From a source that couldn’t last.
Now I gasp, I’m parched and thirsting;
Life is ebbing as she goes.
Yet I die by Love enfolded.
Comforted amid the throes.
One day death will overtake me,
Finally finishing her chore,
And to some she’ll seem the victor:
I’ll look lost forevermore.
Thereupon Love will engulf me,
Love and Truth I’ve written of.
All the dying is for living;
All the living is for Love.
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Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.