Sadness

My good friend's little brother has died, and it is just so wrong.

He was young, just thirty-one, newly-married and had just found out a few days before that he was going to become a father. Nobody knows why he died. The tests after his death showed a young man in apparent perfect health.

The universe seems mean sometimes and frighteningly arbitrary.

I was on holiday last week and had all sorts of fun times, but coming home to this sad news, it seemed wrong to write about all that until I'd said something about this.

So here is the poem my friend read out to remember his brother at the funeral. It pretty much says it all.

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.