Through The Mist Poem by gershon hepner

When Auden switched from Anglican,
becoming Russian Orthodox,
he told a friend: 'Although I can
not understand a word, it rocks.'
Those weren't his words precisely but
I think that I have caught the gist;
he liked the Russian mind, though shut,
because he saw it through a mist.

Accepting that we're just a cog
in God's abstruse machinery,
we should take pleasure in the fog
that hides the lovely scenery,
obscurung views of heaven that
keeps men away with words like weights
which bear down like a bureaucrat
on people at its pearly gates.

Poets God puts in the shade are
responsible to guide us through
the fog with their poetic radar,
Anglo, Orthodox or Jew,
and although priests and rabbis can't,
because they are derisible,
sweet music sometimes cuts through cant,
and makes the darkness visible.

In the November 20th 2008 issue of NYR Charles Rosen reviews the Part II of the Complete Works of WH. Auden by Edward Mendelson ('What Happened to Wystan Auden? ') . He mentions that Auden rejoined the Anglican Communion he had left at the age of fifteen after a mystical experience he had just before going to American in 1939. After the Anglican Church modernized its liturgy he switched to the Russian Orthodox Church. Charles Rosen asked him if he understood its liturgy, and he cheerfully replied, 'Not a word! '

11/17/08