Auden, poem

 I'm not- at least yet- saying this is any good but it's only a few minutes since I said I might or might not sometime see about writing the poem about Auden that I dreamed about about ten hours ago. I just thought I'd see what happened during the Pinot Grigio.

I reckon I can still do it given an idea worth having. 

Auden 

The cigarette he sucks is surrogate
for something more than likely sexual,
the eyes can summarize a likely mate
like something due to be intertextual.
At a European outpost, someone
holds a nervous gun. At home his mother
wonders whether the shooting has begun
while preparing dinner for his brother.

The lines that might look careworn are in fact
a rare affliction or a gift that came
to him as queerly as a lovers’ pact
that turned out, as one might have thought, the same
as everyone else’s do – electric
at first but too soon too habitual
to seem more than the sort of magic trick
that might or might not happen to us all.

(revised 17/07)