[identity profile] glacierscarving.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] greatpoetry
  1. HOW DOTH THE LITTLE CROCODILE
    --Lewis Carroll

    How doth the little crocodile
    Improve his shining tail,
    And pour the waters of the Nile
    On every golden scale!
    How cheerfully he seems to grin,
    How neatly spreads his claws,
    And welcomes little fishes in,
    With gently smiling jaws!
     
  2. My father passed away this Monday and in an hurried attempt to create the funeral service that he deserves before my time up, I am putting together the booklet thing. The funeral director gave me two or three pages of terrible, cliche poems to put on the front of the thing but I looked them over and can't imagine any of them being worth much other than a Hallmark card. So, if you kind people would help me out in my time of need. I am looking for a poem, doesn't matter how long or how short that is about the longing of loved ones, the end of suffering, the afterlife, etc. Thank you. 

Date: 2009-11-12 05:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] eugenetapdance.livejournal.com
Eden Rock
by Charles Causley

They are waiting for me somewhere beyond Eden Rock:
My father, twenty-five, in the same suit
Of Genuine Irish Tweed, his terrier Jack
Still two years old and trembling at his feet.

My mother, twenty-three, in a sprigged dress
Drawn at the waist, ribbon in her straw hat,
Has spread the stiff white cloth over the grass.
Her hair, the colour of wheat, takes on the light.

She pours tea from a Thermos, the milk straight
From an old H.P. Sauce bottle, a screw
Of paper for a cork; slowly sets out
The same three plates, the tin cups painted blue.

The sky whitens as if lit by three suns.
My mother shades her eyes and looks my way
Over the drifted stream. My father spins
A stone along the water. Leisurely,

They beckon to me from the other bank.
I hear them call, 'See where the stream-path is!
Crossing is not as hard as you might think.'

I had not thought that it would be like this.



Funeral Blues
by WH Auden

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 wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

March 2025

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