Stop all the clocks
[Under development: 3 June 2005 ]
When death steals a person we love, our emotions may not be muted. The anguish can be so intense that it is indistinguishable from physical pain. The emptiness and excision of all meaning in life can feel unbearable. W.H. Auden's poem Stop all the clocks was headlined in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral
·
What feelings
did you experience when you lost someone close?
·
How does your own experience of loss inform how
you perceive others who are suffering the pain of bereavement?
·
To what extent do you try, in your life in
general,
1.
to embrace experiencing
emotional pain?
2.
to evade experiencing emotional
pain?
Stop all the clocks
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 the 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.
by W.H. Auden
