I've been enjoying the following Auden lately. My favorites of his are the witty, wildly allusive poems that are not quite narrative yet not quite not. The stanzas hang together under the title, which Auden interprets widely. In this way it is similar to "The Fall of Rome," another great one.
The fourth stanza is the wriest thing I've read on colonialism.
Islands
Old saints on millstones float with cats
xxxTo islands out at sea
Whereon no female pelvis can
xxxThreaten their agape.
Beyond the long arm of the Law,
xxxClose to a shipping road,
Pirates in their island lairs
xxxObserve the pirate code.
Obsession with security
xxxIn Sovereigns prevails;
His Highness and the People both
xxxPick islands for their jails.
Once, where detected worldlings now
xxxDo penitential jobs,
Exterminated species played
xxxWho had not read their Hobbes.
His continental damage done,
xxxLaid on an island shelf,
Napoleon has five years more
xxxTo talk about himself.
How fascinating is that class
xxxWhose only member is Me!
Sappho, Tiberius and I
xxxHold forth beside the sea.
What is cosier than the shore
xxxOf a lake turned inside out?
How do all these other people
xxxDare to be about?
In democratic nudity
xxxTheir sexes lie; except
By age or weight you could not tell
xxxThe keeping from the kept.
They go, she goes, thou goest, I go
xxxTo a mainland livelihood:
Farmer and fisherman complain
xxxThe other has it good.
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