Funeral Blues

                                              Stop the Clocks                                                                        

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 This absolutely beautifully written. W. H. Auden speaks more about the way  I feel about death than any other poem I have read. There is also a mourning period  when a great love has left a relationship, that can be compared to a death. W. H. Auden leaves out all the 'flowery words', usually accompanied in an elegy. He gets right down to the heart of it; that when you have lost someone; you have loved, your heart is emptied and there is not anything that can refill it; not even the stars or the ocean. ELB  2011