INTERVIEWER
There’s a passage in one of your books in which you and Auden are on a train, and you’re savagely attacking religion, and he says: “Be careful, my dear, if you carry on like that, one day you’ll have such a conversion.” Do you think of it in those terms, as a conversion?
ISHERWOOD
Yes. I rather think so. I went through all sorts of attitudes to it. There was a period when I thought I might become a monk myself.
“If I Could Tell You”
(Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957: W. H. Auden)
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so. . . .
The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so. . . .
Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.
Isherwood and Auden came to the United States in 1939 and both became American citizens. Auden settling in NY, Isherwood in LA.
Isherwood preferred the city on the edge of the wilderness. Auden was a denizen of all things urban. Both were profoundly concerned with the human condition and the life of the spirit. While Isherwood was more vocal on this score, Auden quietly served others in startling, profound, and largely silent ways.
