Joyce Lee on fri 24 aug 01
Many of you have asked for another post of the poem by W. H. Auden that =
was read in the funeral scene by Matthew in "Four Weddings and a =
Funeral." This time the subject should make it easy to find in the =
archives, also.
IX
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=20
forever: 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
the wood;
For nothing can now ever come
any good.
Joyce
Lynne Antone on thu 4 jul 02
Hi Everyone, new and old,
Have been off more than on the list the past year. Husband Paul is in his
second year of joining me in the studio and doing very well, I must say for a
beginner, so not as much time to keep track of all of you. We saw this great
poem in an old magazine we picked up at a used book store in our travels
recently. The magazine is "Arizona Highways," the February 1974 issue for
sixty cents originally, think we paid $5. It's chock full of prehistoric
pottery and sites. It says that the poem is "reprinted by permission of
Charles Scribner's Sons. . . Text copyright by Byrd Baylor. A CALDECOTT HONOR
BOOK." Hope I am giving credit correctly.
"When Clay Sings"
Indians who find this pottery today say
that everything has its own spirit-
even a broken pot.
They say the clay remembers
the hands that made it.
Does it remember the cornfields too?
And the summer rains?
And the ceremonies that held life together?
Here are the masks and the costumes
and the great dancing figures.
Here is the flute player
bent low over his song.
They say that even now the wind
sometimes finds one of those songs still in the clay
and lifts it out and carries it down the canyon and across the hills.
It is a small sound and always far away
but they say sometimes they hear it.
Lynne Antone
Beaver Creek Arts
Olympia WA USA
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