If I Could Tell You BY W. H. Auden... What is the true meaning of this poem?

Time will say nothing but I told you so,


Time only knows the price we have to pay;


If I could tell you I would let you know.





If we should weep when clowns put on their show,


If we should stumble when musicians play,


Time will say nothing but I told you so.





There are no fortunes to be told, although,


Because I love you more than I can say,


If I could tell you I would let you know.





The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,


There must be reasons why the leaves decay;


Time will say nothing but I told you so.





Perhaps the roses really want to grow,


The vision seriously intends to stay;


If I could tell you I would let you know.





Suppose all the lions get up and go,


And all the brooks and soldiers run away;


Will Time say nothing but I told you so?


If I could tell you I would let you know.If I Could Tell You BY W. H. Auden... What is the true meaning of this poem?
It could mean that history repeats it's ignorance and nothing gets better.If I Could Tell You BY W. H. Auden... What is the true meaning of this poem?
The true meaning of this poem lies behind the personification of time. The speaker simply does not know how to reply to his subject's implied question ';What will happen in the future?'; Only time can tell; he is not a fortune teller. Time is this autonomous being that calls the shots for everyone, no matter how absurd the circumstances (weeping at clowns rather than laughing, stumbling to music rather than dancing). The irony, however, is that the poem is a villanelle (fyi poem with 19 lines, iambic pentameter, two lines that are stated in the first and third lines of the first tercet and then repeated alternately at the end of each tercet, then repeated together at the end of the last quatrain). Obviously, it is rigidly structured, which would ordinarily signify a definite, assertive answer. But the answer is simply ';I don't know';.