| Lines Reflecting on a Sentence by Robert
Conquest "a curious little volume might be made of the poems of Stalin, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, with illustrations by A. Hitler". Robert Conquest 1. I’d put it this way: the best of artists sense A pattern in experience, Then find ways to express it. Bad artists, like dictators, try Imposing their own order from on high. Any doubt? Repress it. 2. A disturbed poet dreams his Utopia: Where the state’s a happy cornucopia, Unproblematic, Where humans prosper peacefully, And always-gentle harmony Is axiomatic. From that dream he wakes to the world around Where so much misery and sin are found, And injustice, too, And privilege, deceit and lies. He, rejecting compromise, Knows what he must do. Compared with his perfect Utopian vision Reality merits no more than derision As simply not good enough. That actual world in its imperfection Lacks coherence or direction, Is full of mere human stuff. It’s frustrating how people vary, Have their own views, are contrary, Even bloody-minded, Resisting carefully thought-through schemes Based on the noblest of poetic dreams. Are they wilfully blinded? The poet-dictator instinctively knows What has to go, and makes sure it goes. The awkward begin to disappear. The trains run on time, the bureaucracy Has ways to maximise efficiency. It’s great what you can do with fear. 3. Young Auden offered his readers the kicks Of excitingly poeticised politics, Flashing us glimpses of the Just City. Later he dismissed much of that as ‘tripe’, Implying: Don’t fall for political hype, Distrust the too-neat, the over-pretty. 4. In Art we may admire a tight perfection; But in life who’d care to live in subjection To rules constricting as a villanelle’s? In Art we admire virtuoso effects; In life, prize-winning architects Too often create hells. 5. If we must live in an art form, let it be In a generous-spirited comedy, Where nobody’s perfect but where all pretending And pretension will collapse finally, And where fallible he will wed lovely fallible she As, yes, the fifth act stumbles to a happy ending, But it’s the sort of happy ever after That’s unplanned, a bit chaotic, a surprising state, Where people are brought together by laughter, That stuff that dictators hate. George Simmers |
