Poem by Wystan Hugh Auden

The Sabbath

Waking on the Seventh Day of Creation, 
  They cautiously sniffed the air:
The most fastidious nostril among them admitted
  That fellow was no longer there.

Herbivore, parasite, predator scouted,
  Migrants flew fast and far --
Not a trace of his presence: holes in the earth
  Beaches covered with tar,

Ruins and metallic rubbish in plenty
  Were all that was left of him
Whose birth on the Sixth had made of that day
  An unnecessary interim.

Well, that fellow had never really smelled
  Like a creature that would survive:
No grace, address or faculty like those
  Born on the First Five.

Back, then, at last on a natural economy,
  Now His Impudence was gone,
Looking exactly like what it was,
  The Seventh Day went on,

Beautiful, happy, perfectly pointless...
  A rifle's ringing crack
Split the Arcadia wide open, cut
  Their Sabbath nonsense short. 

For whom did they think they had been created?
  That fellow was back, 
More bloody-minded than they remembered, 
  More god-like than they thought. 

1. Lullaby
2. Who’s Who
3. O Where Are You Going...
4. Limbo Culture
5. The More Loving Kind

Caroline Fry (Wilson) The Sabbath ("You would that I write on the Sabbath of God")

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