When Chris Hedges, author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, was held captive in somewhere sixty miles north of Basra, his captors stopped to fill their canteens in some muddy puddles. Hedges explained that he knew that the water purification plants had been destroyed. He knew, because of this, the effect that water would have on their bodies, and those of the women and children who were also seeking water. It was at this time that Hedges remembered Auden's "Epitaph on a Tyrant," a poem he had memorized back in his youth.
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
-- W. H. Auden
As I searched the web today for the entirety of the poem, which, to my surprise is complete as shown above, I found this highly thoughtful and noteworthy commentary by Aseem Kaul. Kaul writes:
Perfection is the word. In six simple lines, Auden paints a portrait of a tyrant that is both human and absolute. Auden's tyrant is not a political machine - no mention is made of his military aspirations or his place in history. Instead we have a tyrant who is frightening precisely because he is so ordinary - he laughs, he cries, he seeks perfection, indulges his interests. He is not even the motive force behind the destruction he causes - he means no harm to the children, it's just that the momentum of his tears causes them to be destroyed.
What makes tyranny so terrifying is the idea that the fate of an entire country and all its people is governed by the magnified yet frail ego of a single individual. And that's exactly what this poem captures.
As I read Auden I think of the concept of awareness, how many people simply have no notion of how their actions or words effect those around them. It's nearly cliche to say that the single beating of a butterfly's wings creates a whirlwind on the other side of the world. But the concept is totally figurative. Our deeds, whether postive or negative, set in motion a chain of events that are likewise postive or negative in motion. This poem was a wonderful find today.
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