Funeral Blues by W.H Auden (read by Tom O’Bedlam)

There’s a video using this reading on YouTube: The poem was not written about the death of a real person. None of Auden’s lovers would fit chronologically. It’s one of Twelve Songs. There was a previous five stanza version, part of “The Ascent of F6“ which is still copyright. This version was written as a cabaret song for the soprano Hedli Anderson to music by Benjamin Britten. The speaker is a woman. Like the rest of the twelve songs it was satire, not pa