September 1, 1939

"**September 1, 1939**" atau 1 September 1939 adalah puisi oleh W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973) yang ditulis pada saat pecah Perang Dunia II. Pertama kali dipublikasikan di *[[The New Republic]]* edisi 18 Oktober 1939, dan ditulis pula dalam buku koleksi puisi karya Auden yaitu *Another Time* (1940).

## Teks puisi


*I sit in one of the dives*

*On Fifty-second Street*

*Uncertain and afraid*

*As the clever hopes expire*

*Of a low dishonest decade:*

*Waves of anger and fear*

*Circulate over the bright*

*And darkened lands of the earth,*

*Obsessing our private lives;*

*The unmentionable odour of death*

*Offends the September night.*

*<br />*
Accurate scholarship can

*Unearth the whole offence*

*From Luther until now*

*That has driven a culture mad,*

*Find what occurred at Linz,*

*What huge imago made*

*A psychopathic god:*

*I and the public know*

*What all schoolchildren learn,*

*Those to whom evil is done*

*Do evil in return.*

*<br />*
Exiled Thucydides knew

*All that a speech can say*

*About Democracy,*

*And what dictators do,*

*The elderly rubbish they talk*

*To an apathetic grave;*

*Analysed all in his book,*

*The enlightenment driven away,*

*The habit-forming pain,*

*Mismanagement and grief:*

*We must suffer them all again.*

*<br />*
Into this neutral air

*Where blind skyscrapers use*

*Their full height to proclaim*

*The strength of Collective Man,*

*Each language pours its vain*

*Competitive excuse:*

*But who can live for long*

*In an euphoric dream;*

*Out of the mirror they stare,*

*Imperialism's face*

*And the international wrong.*

*<br />*
Faces along the bar

*Cling to their average day:*

*The lights must never go out,*

*The music must always play,*

*All the conventions conspire*

*To make this fort assume*

*The furniture of home;*

*Lest we should see where we are,*

*Lost in a haunted wood,*

*Children afraid of the night*

*Who have never been happy or good.*

*<br />*
The windiest militant trash

*Important Persons shout*

*Is not so crude as our wish:*

*What mad Nijinsky wrote*

*About Diaghilev*

*Is true of the normal heart;*

*For the error bred in the bone*

*Of each woman and each man*

*Craves what it cannot have,*

*Not universal love*

*But to be loved alone.*

*<br />*
From the conservative dark

*Into the ethical life*

*The dense commuters come,*

*Repeating their morning vow;*
"

*I will be true to the wife,*

*I'll concentrate more on my work,"*

*And helpless governors wake*

*To resume their compulsory game:*

*Who can release them now,*

*Who can reach the deaf,*

*Who can speak for the dumb?*

*<br />*
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,

*The romantic lie in the brain*

*Of the sensual man-in-the-street*

*And the lie of Authority*

*Whose buildings grope the sky:*

*There is no such thing as the State*

*And no one exists alone;*

*Hunger allows no choice*

*To the citizen or the police;*

*We must love one another or die.*

*<br />*
Defenceless under the night

*Our world in stupor lies;*

*Yet, dotted everywhere,*

*Ironic points of light*

*Flash out wherever the Just*

*Exchange their messages:*

*May I, composed like them*

*Of Eros and of dust,*

*Beleaguered by the same*

*Negation and despair,*

*Show an affirming flame*.
## Referensi