Something Blue

Funeral Blues

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 public 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.

-W. H. Auden

I tried to find a way to superimpose this on a picture of a thick book closing.  It always felt to me as if it had just been read from a large book, which was then closed for the last time.  It is a patient poem, and I imagine the reader just being still with the listener, as if he wrote it for the reader to help through loss.

I think it is moving because it does not try to find meaning.  It doesn't rush to the reader like a small child who has fallen and say, "its okay, its okay."  Auden knows it is not "okay."  It hurts badly, and there isn't anything to do but share the pain.