Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness…by Kahlil Gibran:
A lot of you out there loved the movie “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” I loved it too. I also loved it because it introduced me to a great poet, W. H. Auden who was born in 1907 and died in 1973. The book, “Auden,” published by Alfred A. Knoff describes him this way…’(Auden) is the wittiest, the most urbane, the most civil, companionable, and worldly of English poetry’s great twentieth-century masters. He is also, with his exhilarating lyric power and his understanding of love and longing in all their sacred and profane guises, an exemplary champion of human wisdom in its encounter with the mysteries of experience.’
You may ask, “How in heaven’s name did this movie serve as the introduction to such a great poet? I mean Hugh Grant’s movies are all very good and entertaining, but not very deep!” Ah … but do you remember the funeral scene? To eulogize his beloved companion, his lover reads a poem. It was without a doubt one of the most beautiful poems I had ever heard, and its title, aptly enough, was “Funeral Blues.” I share it with you here:
“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.
