Stoppa alla klockor, stäng av telefonen,
Förhindra hunden från att skälla med ett saftigt ben,
Tysta pianon och med dämpad trumma
Ta fram kistan, låt de sörjande komma.
Låt flygplan cirkla stönande över huvudet
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Sätt crepe-bågar runt de vita halsarna på de offentliga duvorna,
Låt trafikpoliserna bära svarta bomullshandskar.
Han var min nord, min syd, min öst och väst,
Min arbetsvecka och min söndagsvila,
Min middag, min midnatt, mitt prat, min sång;
Jag trodde att kärleken skulle vara för evigt, men jag hade fel.
Stjärnorna är inte önskvärda nu; släck varenda en,
Packa ihop månen och plocka isär solen,
Häll bort havet och sopa upp träet;
För ingenting nu kan någonsin komma till någon nytta.
[W.H. Auden]
Om författaren
W.H. Auden (1907-1973) was an English-American poet admired for his virtuosic command of language and diverse subject matter. Born in York, England, Auden became a prominent literary voice in the 1930s as a leading light of a group of left-leaning poets, including Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. Over his illustrious career, Auden penned some of the 20th century’s most enduring verse, from political works like “Spain” to the achingly personal “Lullaby.” Auden wrote “Funeral Blues,” an emotionally raw elegy, in 1936 and published it the next year as part of The Ascent of F6, a play he co-wrote with Christopher Isherwood.
Diktens innebörd
Begravningsblues captures the visceral anguish of losing a loved one. Written from the perspective of a bereaved lover, the poem demands that the world itself grind to a halt. “Stop all the clocks” to properly acknowledge the enormity of this loss. He wants everyday life and its mundane noises to stop; even the dog’s bark seems like an affront when muted by a “juicy bone.”
As the poem unfolds, stark imagery (“crepe bows” and “black cotton gloves”) thrusts readers into a funeral setting. A haunting irony emerges: the all-encompassing nature of the departed’s impact contrasts the total apathy of the wider world. Lines like “He was my North, my South, my East and West” underscore how completely our beloved can define our world and give it meaning. The jarring final stanza shocks us into grasping how death obliterates the logic of our lives. The poem rails against the cruelty of a universe that can allow feelings of complete love and connection to be severed permanently—”nothing now can ever come to any good.”
But as much as Funeral Blues expresses raging grief, it is a stirringly beautiful love poem. Auden immortalises their bond by cataloguing the myriad ways his partner was central to his existence. In a sense, poetry becomes a bulwark against the finality of death, capable of preserving the most profound human experiences even after we’re gone.
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