Four Weddings and a Funeral

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.

What If God Was One of Us

Someday maybe we’ll understand
How the universe works and why
If there is a God how He works and if
He really loves us at all for all the pain
To be worth it

Someday maybe we’ll have a taste
Of what life should be like if
There are no tears on this world
And someday maybe we’ll just glance
Into what perfection could be like
True kindness, true love, true patience

Sometimes I miss the idea of what it could be
I know how it will always have been but what if

If we could do it all differently
Would we? Could we?

I miss the purity that I was taught
Exists in every person
I miss the idea that everyone is actually good
That everyone could be capable of love
I miss how it would have been
If everything we wanted to believe in if
It really existed

It’s all in my mind
They’re just pretty ideals
Fragile like porcelain
And it’s fast vanishing away
I’m afraid it’s slipping too fast

Your warmth hasn’t left my body
And it’s slipping too fast
And it’s plummeting to death

I miss the moment I thought that
You loved me too

But it just passed.

How many times can we kill ourselves
How many times can this grave be dug
And buried and dug and buried
And how many times can this wound
Bleed open and rip open and crustily healing
Rip apart once more rubbing salt into your heart
Shatter glass into your eyes and mind
Cut yourself to a point of no recovery
And then wish and hope that it will heal
And spend forever pining for when
It didn’t hurt
It didn’t have to but now it does
And now it will never cease
We’re cruel, we are we secretly love this
Game of pushing each other off the edge
And when we are through, when we are
We think we’ll be happy just before I push
Your fingers off the edge I’ll rescue you and
We’ll do this dance of death several times until
We’re too exhausted to pretend we love
We hate we need we live we expect we consider
We breathe we are sustained we perish we revive
Each other

I know there's a place where it goes
Lost memories, conversations and persons
If not how could it with all your love,
even bear to depart with empty smiles?

The last time we spoke
The last time I felt loved
The last time we were happy
The last time there was peace
The last time it seemed like the world had to stop spinning
Because our friendship was too perfect for it to take
The witty lines exchanged, the knowing looks
How could it bear to leave us for desolateness

They're like floating figures
In a garden of mists so ephemeral
Swirling, so pretty

Like the last time I held your heart in my hand
I couldn't have left it behind me just like that
It must have gone to some paradise
If not how could it have mustered the courage to leave me
Knowing how wrecked I'd be without it
Like the last time you made me smile and laugh
And comforted me with beautiful words
It must have fleeted away into the crack hole of time
Into this stunning acre beyond darkness and blemish
If not how could it have gripped its fingers off me
And even contemplate leaving?

I wish I could have done everything you wanted
I wish I could have been more for you and the ghost of us

If we danced into this lovely garden
Would we be greeted by our smiling selves
And they'd say, "What took you so long?
It was so easy to come, so easy to come."

We just didn't have the chance
To find out who we were before we gave it all away.
We didn't lose ourselves, we didn't change
We just brought them to somewhere lovelier
Before any of this mess could begin.

No point wishing over every little thing.
There is nothing left, so nothing to give up
Salvation?
It's when you realize it's too late for change.

Some things just happen too late
Your affections are delayed
Should have said a few words earlier
But too late
Should have refrained from speaking
Too late
Should have never made the decisions
Too late
Should have realised you can’t stand alone
Too late
Shouldn’t have taken the burden upon yourself
And bravely shouldered it for the sake of pride
Take the shovel and dig into the ground
For a place to rest yourself
It’s too late to fix things
The love is lost
It’s too late to say sorry
The silence is too loud
It’s too late to renew the world
It’s too tired to change
It needs a more destructive start
It needs more blood
It’s too late to realise
Shouldn’t have touched
Shouldn’t have delved into intimacy
Shouldn’t have cut a portion of your flesh away
And pretend it wasn’t ever there
Shouldn’t have let the wounds open up and infest
The innocence you seem to have had
Well, it’s too late
The sky has darkened
The cut has been served
You’ve put your heart up for sale
And got it torn into pieces
This is a world that cannot help
Tainting and wrecking every good thing
You loved

Love yourself
The crazy, unforgiving self
Twisting things around and whisking off
Into obtuse fantasies
The wrinkled and scarred skin
The imperfect body that bears
Witness of your struggles
Carries you throughout hour and day
The weight of your sorrows and joy
And into the dust and dawn
The pain carved into your wrists
And subtle melancholy weaved in those eyes

Love yourself
The silly self that cannot conform
Sticking out like a sore thumb in a crowd
And fighting to camouflage your colours
The impulse to charge with your emotions
And the self with no practical ambition

Love the gasping conflicts in your head
That never gives the peace you yearn
Love the lack of esteem as if
You’re good for nothing
And the sudden splurges on you
As if to compensate for something
With anything and anyone willing to
Distract the tearful agony and angst
Willing to love the ugly you

Well years will go on and time
Will wrap you in his grip of vice
The youth will melt away into
Paper thin figures no more than shadows
And history and faded ink
And you are nothing more than what is
The wind that howls and becomes

Nothing

If you dug your fingers into a heart
You’d find it dry and pruned
Try to hold it in your hands
And grapple for a pulse
You’d find the scars fleshy pink
And the holes from which
The blood was drained
Slowly with words and lack of love
It shrivelled into this

And it’s ironic that it’s a heart
But no longer has any capacity
To love anymore
Or skip a beat
And the rest of the organs
They do strive to keep it alive
But the body’s barely surviving

And if you see the eyes
You’d find how hard it is
To compel it to live
As though it had any chance
Of healing or being beautiful
Nothing will ever change
The damage that’s inflicted
Forever echoes in the bloodstream

Have you ever heard of this?
A heart that gave so much
It gave up on itself?

How tired the heart must be
Because it can never rest
And if it does
Then it will never start again
There is no second chance

This is the boy I love
His funny nose and toes
This is the boy I love
That I’ve come to grow
Myself into
Alongside his existence
Shift into the spaces of his timetable
Find a way into the future
Right between the fingers I hold
And the tight grasp
And the crazy way his mind works
At exact opposites with mine
The constant fight against the tide
How he loves to be driven, sometimes uptight
When I’m finding a way into wonderland
Between the pillows
And I suppose it really doesn’t matter
What happened or will happen
If right at this moment
We’re walking in utter silence
The world’s at peace and
It just feels right
Even if it's just

For this moment.

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GOODNIGHT! :)