Lines 47-54: “So in the end it did about as much for the devastated
townspeople as Auden’s verses did for the people and causes he wrote about,
making nothing relevant happen, simply memorializing, enshrining, spiritualizing,
about at the same level as a solemn ritual whose function is to confess
the extreme limitation of our powers to make anything happen.” In
other words, it commemorated a terrible event. (C)