Words...

I suppose you could say I have a fascination with words....I love to write and read, I like to know the origins of words and I like knowing words in other languages.  I ponder how certain words became attached to meanings and to things and if a word, like orange, came first or did the item come first?


So it would come as no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen Fry's latest offering, Planet Word.  I watched the fifth and last episode just the other day where he included an interview with writer Richard Curtis, who worked on Love Actually, Notting Hill and one of my favourites, Four Weddings and a Funeral.  Richard said that he used the poetry of W D Auden in Four Weddings as the words went together so well he couldn't improve on it.  This poem is so beautiful, it always makes me choke up....I heard it for the first time in that movie when Matthew says the eulogy at Gareth's funeral.  


Stop 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 around the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.


He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: 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.


Tell me this man Auden hadn't ever had a broken heart!  That line, He was my North, my South....gets me every time!


What a great compliment that a writer would use another's words to enrich his own work.