By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. <p> But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and r… - W. H. Auden

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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. <p> But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs. The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers. <p> Now he is scattered over a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections; To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.