Sunday, February 14, 2010

Funeral Blues

By W. H. Auden. This beautiful poem about loss has a structure to it - but I didn't like the original structure. I love the rhymes, but I like it better as a kind of rhymeish prose. So that's how it'll be. I found it while watching Four weddings and a funeral - terribly dull movie. I gave up and turned it off just after hearing these beautiful words(for the movie really was anything but interesting)but not before writing them down. I was taken in by them.

~

Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos, and with muffled drum, bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead, scribbling on the sky the message: "he is dead". Put crepe bows 'round the white necks of the publig doves. Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my north, my south, my east and west, my working week and my sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now. Put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep  up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

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