in memorium poetry blogging

Someone around the RGBP blogring has a "Friday Poetry Blogging" thing going on. I will probably get back to Friday Cat Blogging in the not too distant future but as I will be posting a cat pic as part of my response to bls' m*m* tag, I'll pass for now.

In working out my responses for the tag ("What were you doing ten years ago?") I realized that my friend Susan Hattie had been dead ten years just about to the day. In early February 1996 I was very much processing that (on top of my paternal grandmother's death a month before, but my grandmother was 91 and wanted to die). The usenet group I knew her in, rec.food.cooking, was definitely going through a group grieving period.

k.d. lang's "Constant Craving" is the song that always reminds me of Susan, but I offer this poem from W. H. Auden, as I burn a yahrzeit for Susan:

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.