In Memoriam W. H. Auden

Draw back the sackcloth from the windows.
Lock the revolver in the desk drawer.
Another kind of silence
is entering at the open door.
In the writing lamp's circumference,
within the ambient dust,
a concentration is lost.

Throw the dust-sheets over the Cave of Making.
Pile the thirteen volumes of the Dictionary
alphabetically upon the floor.
Archaism returns to the antiquary,
logodaedaly to the ad-men and the Law.
The leaves are silent. These oracles are dumb,
and history all that mystery can become.

Light a candle in Kirkstetten.
Let Aedes Christi ring his passing bell.
...