Friday 25 December 2009

Festive Quatrain


And He said: ‘What hast though done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.’
Genesis IV,9

The answer to the blood of Abel
 Was found among abandoned sheep,
 And landlord startled from his sleep
By woman screaming in a stable.


Incidentally, Auden used to miss out articles definite and indefinite in his early poems because he believed some linguistic theory that the article was going to die out as a part of speech. He was therefore adjusting his style for theoretical generations of the future, who never came to be.



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