Auden

AT THE AGE of 63, he is not cager to talk about the future. He has not won the Nobel Prize, but, after laughingly admitting that "it's always niceto get the cash," he said. "One doesn't think about these things." Superstitious, he would not talk about planned work, commenting, "You never talk about the things you're going to do. You might talk them away and never do them."

... For three nights running

now I have had the same dream

of a suave afternoon in Fall. I am

standing on high ground,

looking out westward over

a plain run smoothly by Jaguar farmers. In the cloignment,

a glitter in the whelking sun,

a sheer bare cliff concludes the vista.

At its base I see,

black shaped like a bell-tent,

the mouth of a cave by which (I

know in my dream) I am to

make my final exit.

its-roof so low it will need an awkward duck to make it.

" Well, will that be so shaming ?"

I ask when awake. Why should it

be? When has Autolycus

ever solemned himself ?

FORTY YEARS ON

When asked how he would like someday to be remembered. Auden leaned back, the cigarette smoke trailing upwards. "All you can say is that you try." he said. "If you write a poem, you try to make an object that will be permanent at hand.

"On the whole," he continued, "the arts are the chief method of communication of the day. Homer is dead and his world is dead also. But today, like always, without communication, a proper human life is not possible."

WE LEFT the Faculty Club and went out into the cold. Auden, despite the fame and success, looking oddly vulnerable in his green wool sports jacket and rolled-down black socks. We wandered, wondering just which one of those yellow buildings was the Dana Palmer House. where Auden was staying. With some help we found it, and, with a pixie-like grin. oddly childlike on his wrinkled face, he shook my hand, thanked me, and shuffled hurriedly away.

Can Sixty make sense to Sixteen-Plus?

What has my camp in common with theirs, with buttons and beards and Be-Ins?

Much I hope. In Acts it is written

Taste was no problem at Pentecost.

PROLOGUE AT SIXTY