Là, c'est le jour où j'ai lu un vers de W.H. Auden :"A home, the centre where the three or four things that happen to a man do happen",

dans le livre de Geoff Dyer, Yoga para los que pasan del yoga, où j'ai été intriguée par le titre du poème , Detective story, où j'ai voulu le lire in extenso et où je l'ai trouvé cité par un Anglais qui a vécu au Japon avant d'emménager à Bruxelles.

Detective story

 

For who is ever quite without his landscape,

The straggling village street, the house in trees,

All near the church, or else the gloomy town house,

The one with the Corinthian pillars, or

The tiny workmanlike flat: in any case

A home, the centre where the three or four things

that happen to a man do happen? Yes,

Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in

The little station where he meets his loves

And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot

Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

An unknown tramp? A rich man? An enigma always

And with a buried past but when the truth,

The truth about our happiness comes out

How much it owed to blackmail and philandering.

The rest’s traditional. All goes to plan:

The feud between the local common sense

And that exasperating brilliant intuition

That’s always on the spot by chance before us;

All goes to plan, both lying and confession,

Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.

Yet on the last page just a lingering doubt:

That verdict, was it just? The judge’s nerves,

That clue, that protestation from the gallows,

And our own smile… why yes…

But time is always killed. Someone must pay for

Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.

 

W.H. Auden