Funeral Blues... an Ode to Auden and Dad

Just a note, reminiscing about the passing of a loved one...

25 days, it's been
since dad passed away,
barely a month ago,
an unreal jolt,
a surreal déjà vu,
a temblor of emotive tsunami.

Suddenly, somehow,
one's father is
no longer
amongst us
in the realm of the living...

The burden of passage
darkens, fades, blots out...
slowly and jaggedly
pinging my senses

The seeping notion that
his physical being,
his genetic bequest
have eclipsed, nay,
passed on,
and I
together with my other siblings
must live on,
through ourselves,
through our own children,
the continuum of unbroken legacy
of evolution's magnificent
abundance, fecundity...

Least wise
that's in the physical sense,
the phenotype of gene sequences
expressed in human traits, yet
there must be more;
whither the emotional,
spiritual endowments?
mustn't these also pass along?

Perhaps...
less quantifiable,
less measurable,
yet as real, probably more significant
more humane, more benevolent, more enriching...
in itself, transitory
in the sojourn
of fleeting time
encapsulated in flitting memories
only of the related, the connected...

Life in its complexities
multiplicities move along
and on,
in time's singular arrow, only forwards...

Yet, I sense a gentle soul
pervades the universal,
the timelessness of it all,
the Gaia of the interlocked nature,
the spirit of forever,
the blending
and the union
with the highest Acme of us all,
the Almighty giver
of life,
of living,
of all goodness,
of all meaning...

Yet the grief,
the enervating loss
the draining despair
distilled to its barest
harshest expressions
Of hollowed out souls,
of vacuous emptiness
crying out loud, voicelessly...

O solitude,
O loneliness,
O guilt of the living...

In Four Weddings and a Funeral, this following beautiful poem by WH Auden, was read which encapsulates the heartache and inexpressible emotions that one can feel and have felt...

Yet, I feel more positive than the diffuse despondency that exudes from Auden's heart-rending poem... There is goodness, yet...

Dad, Good bye again...

Funeral Blues

"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 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 up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

W.H. Auden, 1936

.............ooooo00000ooooo...............