by his ‘Funeral Blues’;
If you were a college poetry student
the day after 9/11
you might have had your poet in residence
read his ‘September 1,1939’
and had your breath taken away
by its accidental appropriateness
and the last line, which he wanted to amend,
‘We must love each other, or die’
Two poems he himself didn’t think quite good enough..
this is posthumous fame beyond the control
of poets;
this is what poetry can leave to the world;
this is what poetry is.
Wystan Hugh Auden would have been 100 today.
Rest In Poetry.