Funeral Blues

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 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 woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

This has to be one of the most impacted I've been by a poem about death. To me it seems to be written from the perspective of a wife who had a very long and happy marriage and could never see it actually ending with the death of her husband. This is how a lot of people probably feel after the death of someone very close to them. I know I have felt this way before so this is a very depiction of what someone will feel or has felt after the death of a loved one.