Infants Remembered In Silence (IRIS) - Poems

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 airplanes circle meaning overhead
scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
put crepe bows round the white necks of
the public doves,
let the traffic policeman were black
cotton gloves.

He was my north, my south, my east,
my west,
my working week and my Sunday rest,
my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,
I thought 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.

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