Poems about Endings.

[spiritualorchid.livejournal.com]

What are your favorite poems about endings?


Here's a poem so this isn't only a request post:

Mona Van Dyun, "Part II"

Setting the V.C.R. when we go to bed
to record a night owl movie, some charmer we missed
we always allow, for unprogrammed unforeseen,
an extra half hour. (Night gods of the small screen
are ruthless with watchers trapped in their piety.)
We watch next evening, and having slowly found
the start of the film, meet the minors and leads,
enter their time and place, their wills and needs,
hear in our chests the click of empathy's padlock,
watch the forces gather, unyielding world
against the unyielding heart, one longing's minefield
laid for another longing, which may yield.
Tears will salt the left-over salad I seize
during ads, or laughter slow my hurry to pee.
But as clot melts toward clearness a black fate
may fall on the screen; the movie started too late.
Torn from the backward-shining of an end
that lights up the meaning of the whole work,
disabled in mind and feeling, I flail and shout,
"I can't bear it! I have to see how it comes out!"
For what is story if not relief from the pain
of the inconclusive, from dread of the meaningless?
Minds in their silent blast-offs search through space--
how often I've followed yours!--for a resting-place.
And I'll follow, past each universe in its spangled
ballgown who waits for the slow-dance of life to start,
past vacancies of darkness whose vainglory
is endless as death's, to find the end of the story.

John Burnside - Echo Room

[bohemiabythesea.livejournal.com]

John Burnside
Echo Room

All night, the long-eared bats
flicker from tree to tree
through the scent of rain;

The luckiest survive for fifteen years,
quick, in the swim of the air
or skimming the earth

Where cats from the village
pluck them entire from the darkness.

To the Ancient Chinese
they meant luck;
to the Flemish, affection;

But here, what they most resemble
is desire:

All skitter and echo,
gathering, then forgetting.

(From: John Burnside, The Hunt in the Forest, London: Cape, 2009.)

Canadian Poetry

[stitchesandlace.livejournal.com]

The Onondaga Madonna

She stands full-throated and with careless pose,
This woman of a weird and waning race,
The tragic savage lurking in her face,
Where all her pagan passion burns and glows;
Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes,
And thrills with war and wildness in her veins;
Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains
Of feuds and forays and her father's woes.

And closer in the shawl about her breast,
The latest promise of her nation's doom,
Paler than she her baby clings and lies,
The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes;
He sulks, and burdened with his infant gloom,
He draws his heavy brows and will not rest.


Watkwenies (The Woman Who Conquered)

Vengeance was once her nation's lore and
law:
When the tired sentry stooped above the rill,
Her long knife flashed, and hissed, and drank its
fill;
Dimly below her dripping wrist she saw,
One wild hand, pale as death and weak as straw,
Clutch at the ripple in the pool; while shrill
Sprang through the dreaming hamlet on the hill,
The war-cry of the triumphant Iroquois.

Now clothed with many an ancient flap and fold,
And wrinkled like an apple kept till May,
She weighs the interest-money in her palm,
And, when the Agent calls her valiant name,
Hears, like the war-whoops of her perished day,
The lads playing snow-snake in the stinging cold.


- Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947)


These two pieces are quite beautiful and powerful in their capture of the struggle between past traditions and the present reality that Aboriginals faced in the early 20th century, and continue to face today. I'm writing an analysis concerning the relationship between form and content in both, and any discussion would be welcome!