THE PROPHETS
PERHAPS I always knew what they were saying:
Even the early messengers who walked Into my life from books where they were staying, Those beautiful machines that never talked But let the small boy worship them and learn All their long names whose hardness made him proud ; Love was a word they never said aloud As something that a picture can't return.
And later when I hunted the Good Place, Abandoned lead-mines let themselves be caught ; There was no pity in the adit's face, The rusty winding-engine never taught One obviously too apt, to say "Too Late": Their lack of shyness was a way of praising Just what I didn't know, why I was gazing, While all their lack of answer whispered " Wait," And taught me gradually without coercion, The calm with which they took complete desertion As proof that you existed.
It was true.
For now I have the answer from the face That never will go back into a book But asks for all my life, and is the Place Where all I touch is moved to an embrace, And there is no such thing as a vain look.
W. H. AUDEN.
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