After Tony died, comfort came unexpectedly through WH Auden’s poem, 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 for ever: 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 wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Of course, part of me knew that the last line was not true. I knew that a lot of good was still going on and that “this too shall pass.” But the logical part of my thinking was at devastating odds with how I felt. In those early days after Tony died, I needed to access my grief; not make it to go away.

WH Auden and I never met in person, but we certainly met in a moment of great need. This is the kind of connection that the art experience is all about; not the person-to-person kind of meeting but the meeting of our mutual needs.

While my grief was strictly a personal sense of loss, it was too one-sided, too isolating, too heavy to bear. Auden’s poem translated my personal experience into universal terms, which was exactly what I needed at that moment. I did not need Tony to come back to life. That would have only postponed the inevitable.

Before reading this poem, grief gnawed at me like a sick, hollow grumble in my belly, separating me from myself and everyone else. After reading this poem, that stifling sense of isolation gave way to an enlarged sense of connection.

All of my experiences have led me to where I am now. I still love performing and teaching, but mainly I want to revolutionize the public school system based on an art-inspired understanding of the self.