Barbed Wire

Here are the first three stanza’s of W. H. Auden’s poem, “Barbed Wire.”

              Across the square,
Between the burnt-out Law Courts and Police Headquarters,
Past the Cathedral far too damaged to repair,
Around the Grand Hotel patched up to hold reporters,
      Near huts of some Emergency Committee,
      The barbed wire runs through the abolished City.

              Across the plains,
Between two hills, two villages, two trees, two friends,
The barbed wire runs which neither argues nor explains
But where it likes a place, a path, a railroad ends,
      The humour, the cuisine, the rites, the taste,
      The pattern of the City, are erased.

              Across our sleep
The barbed wire also runs: It trips us so we fall
And white ships sail without us though the others weep,
It makes our sorry fig-leaf at the Sneerers’ Ball,
      It ties the smiler to the double bed,
      It keeps on growing from the witch’s head.

— Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden (Modern Library)

When I came across this poem in my reading the other day, I was struck by how nearly it describes the world that between them Osama Bin Laden and George W. Bush have wrought. I thought particularly of Baghdad.

Ronald Reagan may have commanded Mr. Gorbachev to tear down one wall, but we have spent the intervening years building countless others, from gated communities in U.S. cities to the concrete barricades between Shia and Sunni in Baghdad, to the cages in Guantanamo, to the border fence between Israel and Palestine and our own useless fence on the Mexican border.

What are we afraid of losing that is worth this much sacrifice?

Our lives, you might say. A pretty bleak survival, I might answer.

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