"STOP all the clocks; cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with the juicy bone
Silence the pianos, and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come.
Let airplanes circle, moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message: he is dead."
Mr Glen Caraher, the grandson of the former Minister for Health Dr Noel Browne, recited these words by the poet W.H. Auden just before his grandfather was laid to rest yesterday in a sandy Connemara grave.
Surrounded at the end by his family, close friends and neighbours, it was a simple but emotional ceremony at Baintreach Cemetery, overlooking the Atlantic at Baile na hAbhann.
Although the Catholic Church's former adversary had eschewed a religious ceremony, he was buried on consecrated ground, something which would have been unthinkable at the time he was involved in his battles with the Church over the Mother and Child Scheme.
But his public battles seemed of little consequence in the Connemara graveyard, as friends and loved ones faced their private loss. Raw emotion took the place of words as his grand-daughter, Nena Assa, played the first movement from Bach's Sonata No 5 on the flute, and musician Alec Finn played Stan na Maighe on the mandolin.
In a brief homily, the local parish priest, Father Hughie Loftus, said Dr Browne had continued to take a keen interest in the area until his death.
He had tried to do whatever he could for local people, raising issues such as the provision of music education and sailing facilities for young people.
"Is iomai rud a rinne Noel, agus le deireannas chuir me aithne ar chuid acu, o thaobh ceoil agus spoirt no badoireacht. Fiu amhain ansin, bhi se ag iarraidh rud a dheanamh ar son mhuintir na haite, cunamh a thabhairt do dhaoine agus iad a chur chun cinn, he said.
Then he read from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, 1 am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."
Earlier, scores of mourners from all walks of life quietly filed into O'Flaherty's funeral home in Galway city to pay their last respects.
They included retired civil servants, former colleagues from the medical world and people who had benefited from Dr Browne's pioneering work in eradicating TB.
"I would not be here today but for him," one elderly man told The Irish Times. "I was five years in the sanatorium until they found that new drug."
The President, Mrs Robinson, was represented by her aide-de-camp, Commdt Dermot O'Connor. The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, was represented by his aide-de-camp, Capt Maurice McQuillan.