No Time

It seems that I am now in the habit of giving not a quote per day, but a poem per day. I am working through the collected works of W.H. Auden, sometimes proceeding in the order of the book, but sometimes jumping around to titles that catch my eye. My interest in time led me to this one:

No Time

Clocks cannot tell our time of day
For what event to pray,
Because we have no time, because
We have no time until
We know what time we fill,
Why time is other than time was.

Nor can our question satisfy
The answer in the statue's eye.
Only the living may ask whose brow
May wear the Roman laurel now:
The dead say only how.

What happens to the living when they die?
Death is not understood by death: nor you, nor I.