poem and request

[glacierscarving.livejournal.com]

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. 

Comments

[pyreneeees.livejournal.com]

This isn't really about death, but the title "Postscript" always makes me think it would be appropriate for a funeral or graduation. Like advice from the departed person. Either way it's really really beautiful. I think the line, "the surface of a slate-grey lake is lit" is the most perfect combination of sounds.

Postscript
by Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.