Aubade

When first reading the poem I thought it was about death. The first line “The sure extinction that we travel to”, I thought that by extinction the author meant death. Back in high school my English teacher would give us a poem and we would have to translate it line by line. To understand this poem I attempted that strategy:

The sure extinction that we travel to
The definite death that we come across
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
And forever be gone. Not here anymore
Not to be anywhere,
Not anywhere
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. Soon enough, it is terrible but very true
This is a special way of being afraid
It is okay to be afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
There’s no way to overcome it, religions have tried
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Rotten and eaten by moths
Created to pretend we never die,
It was created to act like people never die
And specious stuff that says No rational being
There’s no rational reasoning behind it
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
There’s no reason to be afraid, you can’t see death or feel it
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
That is why we’re afraid, you can’t see or hear death
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
You can’t touch death or taste it, you can’t smell it, you can’t think
Nothing to love or link with,
No one to love or connect with
The anasthetic from which none come round.
Nothing appealing will come around

(The blue is my translation)

For many reasons death was the only thing I could think about while reading the poem. Then I decided to research that poem a bit. I found that an Aubade was a “poem or song about lovers separating at dawn” (Wikipedia.com). This makes sense now. The author of the poem is talking about being separated from his significant other and therefore the author is depressed and wants to die. The line “nothing to love or link with” means that the author has no one to connect to and no one to love, therefore the author is depressed. I believe the author is writing this towards everyone who has ever lost a love one and feels the pain the author is now experiencing.