W H Auden's Funeral for a Blue

AUDEN’S classic polemical poem seems uncannily prescient in the light of recent events.

It was famously altered for use in Four Wedding and a Funeral but appears below in its original form.

Funeral For A Blue

Shut up Big Ben, cut off your leftwing groans

Prevent protestors coming, arrest them at home

Silence the pop charts and with Cameron

Bring the hearse you paid for, you know, that one

 

Let backbenchers circle and sadly shake their head

Scribbling in The Mail the column ‘She Is Dead’

Make shit jokes round Westminster bars and private clubs

Let armed policeman scare off those who will not sob

 

She shafted the North, the South survived the test

A working week was quite rare at best

A loon, a nutbag, a hawk, so long

I thought Thatcherism was forever: I’m not wrong

 

The poor are not wanted now; put down every one

They’re all on the fiddle, or so says The Sun

Paw away on Twitter and rally the good;

You can whinge all you want, it won’t do any good.