![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
3butterflies.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
greatpoetryHi.
We've just had a loss in my extended family. Can anyone post any beautiful poems about death? Not any too religious or too sappy?
**EDIT: This had turned out to be a beautiful thread. Thank you for all of your kind words.
We've just had a loss in my extended family. Can anyone post any beautiful poems about death? Not any too religious or too sappy?
**EDIT: This had turned out to be a beautiful thread. Thank you for all of your kind words.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:31 pm (UTC)My favorite poem about death is And Death Shall Have No Dominion (http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/1072357.html), by Dylan Thomas. However, I don't know if the imagery would be comforting or disturbing.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:36 pm (UTC)by Edna St Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, —but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:52 pm (UTC)Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:17 pm (UTC)Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
-- W.H. Auden
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:22 pm (UTC)When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say; all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:35 pm (UTC)I've always found this poem very comforting and beautiful~
'Death Is Nothing At All'
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.
All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland
x x x
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-20 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:48 pm (UTC)Requiescat by Oscar Wilde
TREAD lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast;
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, peace; she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet;
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.
and:
Poem by Langston Hughes
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends
Soft as it began-
I loved my friend.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:51 pm (UTC)Lament by Edna St Vincent Millay
Listen, children,
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there:
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco.
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on
Though good men die.
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine.
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 11:37 pm (UTC)From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants."
Oh... that's lovely.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-01 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-17 11:37 pm (UTC)Take care.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 12:01 am (UTC)I'm sorry for your loss.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 12:23 am (UTC)And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:16 am (UTC)Japanese Death Poems... courtesy of Salon.com
Date: 2006-10-18 12:25 am (UTC)Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
A few days before his death, Kozan called his pupils together, ordered them to bury him without ceremony, and forbade them to hold services in his memory. He wrote this poem on the morning of his death, laid down his brush and died sitting upright.
____________________________________________________________________________
Senryu, died June 2, 1827
Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.
____________________________________________________________________________
Gesshu Soko, died January 10, 1696, at age 79
Inhale, exhale
Forward, back
Living, dying:
Arrows, let flown each to each
Meet midway and slice
The void in aimless flight --
Thus I return to the source.
Re: Japanese Death Poems... courtesy of Salon.com
Date: 2006-10-18 01:18 am (UTC)Re: Japanese Death Poems... courtesy of Salon.com
Date: 2006-10-18 01:28 am (UTC)Re: Japanese Death Poems... courtesy of Salon.com
Date: 2006-10-18 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:36 am (UTC)From One Who Stays
How empty seems the town now you are gone!
A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls
Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls
Eery, distorted, as it long had shone
On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.
The whir of motors, stricken through with calls
Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;
But all these noises blur to one long moan.
What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange
That other men still go accustomed ways!
I hate their interest in the things they do.
A spectre-horde repeating without change
An old routine. Alone I know the days
Are still-born, and the world stopped, lacking you.
-Amy Lowell
My consolations on your loss.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 09:46 am (UTC)To Daffodils, by Robert Herrick.
Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 10:30 am (UTC)He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves--
And Immortality.
We slowly drove--He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labour and my leisure too,
For His Civility--
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess--in the Ring--
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain--
We passed the Setting Sun--
Or rather--He passed Us--
The Dews drew quivering and chill--
For only Gossamer, my Gown--
My Tippet--only Tulle--
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses Heads
Were toward Eternity--
Emily Dickinson
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 01:20 pm (UTC)I've always loved this one.
Date: 2006-10-18 02:55 pm (UTC)From each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit dangles therefrom
the purpled world will dance upon
Between my lips which did sing
a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passions wastes
will lay between their little breasts
My strong fingers beneath the snow
Into strenous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass
their wings will touch with their face
and all the while shall my heart be
With the bulge and nuzzle of the sea
by E. E. Cummings
My condolences for your loss.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 08:00 pm (UTC)It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night -
It was the plant and flower of Light
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
Ben Jonson
It's a Queer Time
It's hard to know if you're alive or dead
When steel and fire go roaring through your head.
One moment you'll be crouching at your gun
Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun :
The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast
No time to think leave all and off you go . . .
To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow,
To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime
Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Rest West!
It's a queer time.
You're charging madly at them yeling 'Fag!'
When somehow something gives and your feet drag.
You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain
And find . . . You're digging tunnels through the hay
In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day.
O springy hay, and lovely beams to climb!
You're back in the old sailor suit again.
It's a queer time.
Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out
A great roar the trench shakes and falls about
You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then . . . hullo!
Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench,
Hanky to nose -- theat lyddite makes a stench
Getting her pinafore all over grime.
Funny! because she died ten years ago!
It's a queer time.
The trouble is, things happen much too quick;
Up jump the Boshes, rifles thump and click,
You stagger, and the whole scene fades away:
Even good Christians don't like passing straight
From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate
To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime
Of golden harps . . . and . . . I'm not well today . . .
It's a queer time.
from OVER THE BRAZIER
Robert Graves
no subject
Date: 2006-10-19 04:43 am (UTC)But here is one of my favorites:
The Dead
--Billy Collins
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
Mid Term Break
Date: 2006-10-19 07:29 pm (UTC)Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying
He had always taken funerals in his stride
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Seamus Heaney
I'm sorry for your loss. This is one of my favorites.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-20 04:05 am (UTC)Life is the name given to a few moments, and
In but one of those fleeting moments
Two eyes meet eloquently
Looking up from a cup of tea, and
Enter the heart piercingly
And say,
Today do not speak
I'll be silent too
Let's just sit thus.
Holding each other's hand
United by this gift of sorrow
Bonded by the stirring of emotions.
Who knows if in this very moment
Somewhere in the distant mountain
The snow at last may start to thaw.