W. H. Auden · 1936
Funeral Blues
W. H. Auden · 1936
This poem's text is not reproduced here. What it says, when it was written and how it came to be read at funerals are facts about the work rather than the work itself.
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What Serany thinks about this poem
Background
Auden wrote it in 1936, originally as a deliberately overblown satirical song for a verse play, The Ascent of F6. He rewrote it as a cabaret number for the singer Hedli Anderson. It became a funeral standard only after Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, where John Hannah reads it for his partner, and the publisher reprinted Auden's poems as a pamphlet to meet the demand.
Meaning
It starts as instructions: stop the clocks, cut the phone off, bring out the coffin. Then it turns into a list of everything the dead man was to the speaker, who says he was his North, South, East and West. The last stanza dismantles the sky itself, because if that person is gone then nothing is going to come to any good ever again. It is the least consoling famous funeral poem there is, and that is the point of it.
Who's it for
This is the one for a mourner who is not ready to be comforted and would resent being told the person is at peace. It is unmatched for a partner, and it is honest about a loss that has taken the floor out. Think hard before reading it to a room with children in it, or at a service meant to end on hope, because it ends on none: the last line says nothing good can ever come again, and it means it.
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