A Poem Is Never Finished!

I have a bio of Auden.
I've read it several times.
Pen in hand, always underlining.

Read it enough, and the whole book'll soon be underlined.
His life means something to me.
"A poem is never finished," he said.

I like that.
Stuff is never finished.
Neither is life.

Sure, someone dies.
And that's that.
But life is never finished.

I'll die, too.
And so will you.
And so will our children.

And grandchildren, too.
Death is that finalizer.
It smiles with its power.

But the earth goes on.
And will likely go on for some time to come.
And so will the universe.

Expanding limits.
Stars exploding.
Protons and buffoons.

Life is never finished.
Life is movement.
Reaching.

For those who believe in eternal life.
Well, that's the on-going stuff, isn't it?
The stuff that's never finished.

I've thought, If there is an eternity.
It's movement ... like the Book of Revelation.
A bustling city, noisy; the lights never turned off.

In Christ, for sure.
Who says, "Follow me!"
To places yet unknown.

The inexhaustible heart of God.
If God had a beginning, it was the moment when
God realized there could be love.

Anyway, I like Auden.
His hold on faith.
Or faith's hold on him.

His struggles with his own flesh.
His being, identity, his love.
His dreams and desires.

No wonder a poem is never finished.

Haunted by "Casino" - Auden, 1936

Casino

Only their hands are living, to the wheel attracted,
Are moved, as deer trek desperately towards a creek
   Through the dust and scrub of a desert, or gently,
   As sunflowers turn to the light,

And, as night takes up the cries of feverish children,
The cravings of lions in dens, the loves of dons,
   Gathers them all and remains the night, the
   Great room is full of their prayers.

To a last feast of isolation self-invited,
They flock, and in a rite of disbelief are joined;
   From numbers all their stars are recreated,
   The enchanted, the worldly, the sad.

Without, calm rivers flow among the wholly living
Quite near their trysts, and mountains part them, and birds,
   Deep in the greens and moistures of summer,
   Sing towards their work.

But here no nymph comes naked to the youngest shepherd,
The fountain is deserted, the laurel will not grow;
   The labyrinth is safe but endless, and broken
   Is Ariadne’s thread,

As deeper in these hands is grooved their fortune: 'lucky
Were few, and it is possible that none was loved,
   And what was god-like in this generation
   Was never to be born.'

-W. H. Auden, 1936