My Favourite Poem.

'Funeral Blues' by W. H. Auden

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 for ever: 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.



This poem is so important to me that I didn't even put it in pretty pink writing.

I think that it is easier to write about sad subjects, as well as it is easier for them to have more of an impact on an audience. This is because we use words like 'happy' and 'excited' all the time, but words like 'sombre' and 'broken' are reserved for only the words of occasions, so they still carry an impact.

I first heard this poem in the film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (amazing film), obviously, it is in the funeral scene. Here, actor John Hannah, playing Matthew, reads 'Funeral Blues' at the funeral of his lover.

(sorry about the quality)
 


This poem is so emotional, raw and honest. It just makes you feel as though the speaker is so destroyed by the death of their partner that they are left hurt and broken.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

In these opening lines, if you hadn't heard the title, you'd be like, 'Ok, something important is about to happen and it needs everybody's attention, 100%'. This is how the woman (I'm saying woman because I am a woman, so I imagine a woman's voice reading it in my head) feels, she is saying that nothing will interrupt what is about to happen. She won't let it.

Then comes the blow:

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Now you know that it's bad, she has set out the rest of the poem and she is just going to pour her feelings out to you while you're silent.

The next verse tells you how important he was, as if not only to her. She sounds as though he was a king or a celebrity; that his passing affects everyone. She is saying that you should change things all over the nation, such as gloves or bows on doves,  so that everybody can mourn, not just his close friends and family. I think that John Hannah is particularly amazing when saying the words, 'He Is Dead'. These are capitalised to show their importance, in the way that 'He' meaning God in the Bible has a capital letter. To this woman, all the news of the world has stopped, and the single most important thing she now knows is that He Is Dead.

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.

The next three lines tell you just how important he was to her, and it's off the scale. He was her North, South, East and West-he was her whole world, every corner of it. He was her life and everyday in it through the week, he was always there. He was in her mind and every time of day, and he was in her boring conversations and her joyful moments too.

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;

Then comes one little line that describes her total agony, and her destruction:

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

She is not trying to be romantic about it by saying 'he will always be with me' or 'we will always love each other'. Whether she was religious before his death or not, she certainly doesn't believe in Heaven now. All the good has gone from the world, there can be no God, he wouldn't let this happen. She is totally alone now.

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 her, it doesn't matter if the whole world and all of its beauty are taken away. She doesn't care any more. She has lost the will. Nothing will  ever be as beautiful or make her as happy as him. She is ready to close her eyes to the world and give up, and she doesn't care if no one else can see it either. She just wants him back.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

That's it for her. Nothing will be good now he is gone. He was her world, her light, her happiness, and now it's over.

This is such a powerful poem, and you can really imagine the woman becoming a recluse, and never managing to move on or find love again. I think that Auden is trying to isolate that feeling you get when someone has just died, maybe that day. There is shock, disbelief, anger, loneliness, frustration and an overwhelming feeling of loss and wanting to go back in time. Auden is not talking about a few months down the line when you've been forced to move on by your life. The focus is on that single moment of utter brokenness, when you just don't want to go on. It is something I have felt, and will again before I die, and it is such a strong and honest emotion that it is so worth capturing in a poem. That is why it is my favourite poem of all time, it is not depressing, it is just amazing at taking all of your emotions that you don't understand and showing them to you on a page so that you can relate to it.



I love it.