Epithalamion

(For Giuseppe Antonio Borgese and 
Elizabeth Mann, Nov. 23, 1939)

While explosives blow to dust 
Friends and hopes, we cannot pray, 
Absolute conviction must 
Seem the whole of life to youth, 
Battle's stupid gross event 
Keep all learning occupied: 
Yet the seed becomes the tree; 
Happier savants may decide 
That this quiet wedding of 
A Borgese and a Mann 
Planted human unity; 
Hostile kingdoms of the truth, 
Fighting fragments of content, 
Here were reconciled by love, 
Modern policy begun 
    On this day.

A priori dogmas brought 
Into one collective will 
All the European thought: 
Eagle theologians swept 
With an autocratic eye 
Hungry for potential foes
The whole territory of truth 
Where the great cathedrals rose; 
Gentle to instinctive crimes, 
With a sharp indulgence heard 
Paradox-debating youth, 
Listened where the injured wept 
For the first rebellious sigh,
And unerringly at times 
On some small progressive bird 
    Swooped to kill.

But beneath them as they flew 
Merchants with more prudent gaze 
Broke eternity in two: 
Unconcerned at the controls 
Sat an ascetic engineer 
In whose intellectual hand 
Worlds of dull material lay, 
All that bankers understand; 
While elected by the heart 
Out of sentiment, a lamb 
With haemorrhages night and day 
Saved enthusiastic souls;
Sorrow apt to interfere,
Wit that spoils romantic art, 
In the social diagram 
    Knew their place.

Yet no lie has only friends
Too polite to ask for proof:
Patriots, peering through the lens
Of their special discipline
At the map of knowledge, see
Superstition overcome
As all national frontiers melt
In a true imperium;
Fearing foreign skills no more,
Feel in each conative act
Such a joy as Dante felt
When, a total failure in
An inferior city, he,
Dreaming out his anger, saw
All the scattered leaves of fact
    Bound by love.

May this bed of marriage be
Symbol now of the rebirth
Asked of old humanity:
Let creative limbs explore
All creation's pleasure then;
Laughing horses, rocks that scream,
All the flowers that ever flew
Through the banquet of a dream,
Find in you a common love
Of extravagant sanity;
Till like Leonardo who,
Jostled by the sights of war
And unpleasant greedy men,
At Urbino watched a dove,
Your experience justify
    Life on earth.

Grateful in your happiness,
Let your Ariels fly away
To a gay unconsciousness
And a freely chosen task:
Shame at our shortcomings makes
Lame magicians of us all,
Forcing our invention to
An illegal miracle
And a theatre of disguise;
Brilliantly your angels took
Every lover's rôle for you,
Wore seduction like a mask
Or were frigid for your sakes;
Set these shadows, now your eyes
On the whole of substance look,
    Free today.

Kindly to each other turn,
Every timid vice forgive
With a quaker's quiet concern
For the uncoercive law,
Till your double wish be one,
Till, as you successful lie,
Begotten possibility,
Censoring the nostalgic sigh
To be nothing or be right,
Form its ethical resolve
Now to suffer and to be:
Though the kingdoms are at war,
All the peoples see the sun,
All the dwellings stand in light,
All the unconquered worlds revolve,
    Life must live.

Vowing to redeem the State,
Now let every girl and boy
To the heaven of the Great
All their prayers and praises lift:
Mozart with ironic breath
Turning poverty to song,
Goethe ignorant of sin
Placing every human wrong,
Blake the industrious visionary,
Tolstoi the great animal,
Hellas-loving Hoclderlin,
Wagner who obeyed his gift
Organised his wish for death
Into a tremendous cry,
Looking down upon us, all
    Wish us joy.