Death Poems Read online

  Published by Disinformation Books,

  an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

  with offices at

  665 Third Street, Suite 400

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Russ Kick. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Death Poems : classic, contemporary, witty, serious, tear-jerking, wise, profound, angry, funny, spiritual, atheistic, uncertain, personal, political, mythic, earthy, and only occasionally morbid / edited by Russ Kick.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-938875-04-5

  1. Death--Poetry. I. Kick, Russell, editor of compilation.

  PN6110.D4D43 2013

  808.81'93548--dc23

  2013026737

  Cover design by Jim Warner

  Interior by Kathryn Sky-Peck

  See pages 324–327 for credits and permissions.

  Printed in the United States of America

  WOR

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Disinformation® is a registered trademark of The Disinformation Company Ltd.

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-199.

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Nature of Death

  Seeing Death

  Those Who Have Gone (and the Ones Still Here)

  Love

  The Four-Legged and the Winged

  Violence

  Facing One's Demise

  The Crossing

  Remains and Rituals

  What Comes Next

  Carpe Diem

  Ossuary

  introduction

  Every poem [is] an epitaph.

  T.S. ELIOT

  Name any well-known poet from any age, any country. He or she wrote at least one poem about death, most likely several poems. I can basically guarantee it. Death is one of the most common themes in the entirety of poetry. Whether it's a lamentation for a loved one or a public figure, a reflection on their own upcoming appointment with the grave, a meditation on the nature of death, or perhaps what happens afterward, every poet has found inspiration—sometimes welcome, often not—in the fate we all have in common. It provides a lens through which to examine life, changing everything else by its looming, inevitable presence. Our time here is brief; this play has a limited engagement, and there are no do-overs. Everything we do counts. Time is always running out, and the poets know that this casts life in an entirely different light than if we were immortal.

  Death also provides a profound mystery—the ultimate mystery, really—to be examined, prodded, hypothesized about, potentially unraveled (but probably not). Poets love a mystery, and there is none bigger. In an interview, the great Anne Sexton said: “You see, I can explain sex in a minute, but death—I can't explain.”

  Finally, death provides a taboo, which poets love. It's disturbing, not to be talked about. But poetry specializes in taboos. It provides a way to speak about the unspeakable. The social rules of normal discourse, even the social rules of other types of writing, don't apply to poetry. By approaching things obliquely, by using language in a nonordinary—you could even say “magic”—way, by short-circuiting the rules of dialog and sneaking underneath the barbed wire of our rational, logical minds, poetry can address with impunity any topic it wants to. “Tell all the Truth,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “but tell it slant.”

  Given the universality of death in poetry, you would expect to find a lot of anthologies collecting poetry on the topic. Themed collections of poetry are extremely popular. Bookshelves sag with anthologies of cowboy poetry, Japanese poetry, poems about the ocean, poems on motherhood, baseball, spirituality, music, food. . . . The number of books that collect love poetry is beyond calculating. And, as I write this, you can choose from more than ten anthologies of dog poetry in print. (Cats have around the same number.) But no one has brought together a big selection of the wide-ranging poems about death. There are several anthologies of poems specifically about loss, mourning, and grieving, and some of them are specifically marketed as providing readings for funeral services, or as a way to help the bereaved cope with their loss. There is a small omnibus of poems about murder, and you won't have trouble finding anthologies of war poems.

  Just why it has been mostly ignored is puzzling, but my guess is that the taboo of death comes into play here. Maybe it strikes publishers and anthologists as morose. Maybe the topic of death is considered too much of a buzzkill. Putting together anthologies about personal loss and grieving is a psychological service. Creating anthologies about war is an historical and social service. But creating an anthology about death in general—in all its aspects—well, that's just bleak, right? Morbid. No, actually. Not at all. When you have many of the finest creative minds in history addressing one of the most important aspects of the human condition, you're going to get riches—a revealing, finely wrought kaleidoscope of ideas, attitudes, and experiences.

  You're going to get Walt Whitman celebrating death as an important part of the richness of life. Lord Byron penning a beautiful epitaph for his beloved dog (there's dogs and poetry again!). Emily Dickinson going for a carriage ride with Death, and Dylan Thomas pleading with his father to not go gentle into that good night. The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus ironically but accurately noting death's role as a healer. The Nobel Prize-winning Modernist poet Wallace Stevens opining that “Death is the mother of beauty.” The decadent Charles Baudelaire reminding his lover that one day she'll be a rotting corpse. Thomas Hardy—best known for his novels Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge—wryly writing about a widow and an ex-wife meeting over the grave of the man they had in common. American slaves singing of the holy glories to come, and the Irish singing about a man who comes back to life at his own wake. The ancient Indian holy text The Baghavad Gita explaining the immortality of our true essence. Biting epitaphs by Scotland's Robert Burns. Wanda Coleman's furious litany of innocent African Americans killed by police.

  In this collection, several soldier-poets write of life in the trenches and on the battlefield, and Miranda Beeson offers an unexpected angle on 9/11. Former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins cheekily wonders if death is closing in on him, while an earlier Laureate, William Stafford, writes about losing his grip while mountain climbing. The seventeenth-century Cavalier poet Robert Herrick ponders the death of trees, and, around 250 years later, Imagist poet Amy Lowell graphically describes killing flowers. Literary legend D.H. Lawrence uses the moon to form a pact with his dead beloved, while the always astonishing Edna St. Vincent Millay is relieved that her paramour died before their relationship could go sour. The recently departed Lucille Clifton addresses the unborn child she aborted at home, while Charlotte Brontë grieves for her younger sister Anne, killed by consumption. Todd Davis puts a rabbit out of its misery, and Linda Hogan comforts a horse who has lost her foal. Two of the poets here (Tichborne and Villon) wrote verse while waiting for their death sentence the following morning. Others imagine what Heaven or Hell might be like. Some poets can't wait to die, while the unjustly overlooked Sara Teasdale loves life and nature so much that she doesn't want to leave, even vowing to find a way back.

  As you can tell, this collection ranges dramatically. It goes across all o
f history, from the ancients straight through to today. Across countries and languages, across schools of poetry. You'll find a plethora of approaches—witty, humorous, deadly serious, tear-jerking, wise, profound, angry, spiritual, atheistic, uncertain, highly personal, political, mythic, earthy, and only occasionally morbid. Every angle you can think of is covered—the deaths of children, lost loves, funeral rites, close calls, eating meat, serial killers, the death penalty, roadkill, the Underworld, reincarnation, elegies for famous people, death as an equalizer, death as a junk man, death as a child, the death of God, the death of death . . .

  This is a dazzling, largely unmined vein in poetry's long history. I hope this collection captures a big cross section of that mosaic.

  —RUSS KICK

  the nature of death

  In which the poets reflect on what death is, meditate on why it happens, and pontificate on what it means to us

  From “Song of Myself”

  WALT WHITMAN

  I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

  What do you think has become of the young and old men?

  And what do you think has become of the women and children?

  They are alive and well somewhere,

  The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

  And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

  And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

  All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

  And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

  • • •

  Death the Leveller

  JAMES SHIRLEY

  The glories of our blood and state

  Are shadows, not substantial things;

  There is no armour against fate;

  Death lays his icy hand on kings:

  Sceptre and Crown

  Must tumble down,

  And in the dust be equal made

  With the poor crookèd scythe and spade.

  Some men with swords may reap the field,

  And plant fresh laurels where they kill:

  But their strong nerves at last must yield;

  They tame but one another still:

  Early or late

  They stoop to fate,

  And must give up their murmuring breath,

  When they, pale captives, creep to death.

  The garlands wither on your brow;

  Then boast no more your mighty deeds;

  Upon Death's purple altar now

  See, where the victor-victim bleeds:

  Your heads must come

  To the cold tomb;

  Only the actions of the just

  Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

  • • •

  Dirge

  ALFRED KREYMBORG

  Death alone

  has sympathy for weariness:

  understanding

  of the ways

  of mathematics:

  of the struggle

  against giving up what was given:

  the plus one minus one

  of nitrogen for oxygen:

  and the unequal odds,

  you a cell

  against the universe,

  a breath or two

  against all time:

  Death alone

  takes what is left

  without protest, criticism

  or a demand for more

  than one can give

  who can give

  no more than was given:

  doesn't even ask,

  but accepts it as it is,

  without examination,

  valuation,

  or comparison.

  • • •

  Poets Have Chanted Mortality

  JOHN CROWE RANSOM

  It had better been hidden

  But the Poets inform:

  We are chattel and liege

  Of an undying Worm.

  Were you, Will, disheartened,

  When all Stratford's gentry

  Left their Queen and took service

  In his low-lying country?

  How many white cities

  And grey fleets on the storm

  Have proud-builded, hard-battled,

  For this undying Worm?

  Was a sweet chaste lady

  Would none of her lover.

  Nay, here comes the Lewd One,

  Creeps under her cover!

  Have ye said there's no deathless

  Of face, fashion, form,

  Forgetting to honor

  The extent of the Worm?

  O ye laughers and light-lipped,

  Ye faithless, infirm,

  I can tell you who's constant,

  'Tis the Eminent Worm.

  Ye shall trip on no limits,

  Neither time ye your term,

  In the realms of His Absolute

  Highness the Worm.

  • • •

  Death Is a Fisherman

  BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (ATTRIBUTED)

  Death is a fisherman, the world we see

  His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be;

  His net some general sickness; howe'er he

  Is not so kind as other fishers be;

  For if they take one of the smaller fry,

  They throw him in again, he shall not die:

  But death is sure to kill all he can get,

  And all is fish with him that comes to net.

  • • •

  Death Snips Proud Men

  CARL SANDBURG

  Death is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see 'em, now you don't.

  Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says: Read 'em and weep.

  Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want you I'll drop in—and then one day he comes with a master-key and lets himself in and says: We'll go now.

  Death is a nurse mother with big arms: 'Twon't hurt you at all; it's your time now; just need a long sleep, child; what have you had anyhow better than sleep?

  • • •

  On Death, Without Exaggeration

  WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA

  It can't take a joke,

  find a star, make a bridge.

  It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,

  building ships, or baking cakes.

  In our planning for tomorrow,

  it has the final word,

  which is always beside the point.

  It can't even get the things done

  that are part of its trade:

  dig a grave,

  make a coffin,

  clean up after itself.

  Preoccupied with killing,

  it does the job awkwardly,

  without system or skill.

  As though each of us were its first kill.

  Oh, it has its triumphs,

  but look at its countless defeats,

  missed blows,

  and repeat attempts!

  Sometimes it isn't strong enough

  to swat a fly from the air.

  Many are the caterpillars

  that have outcrawled it.

  All those bulbs, pods,

  tentacles, fins, tracheae,

  nuptial plumage, and winter fur

  show that it has fallen behind

  with its halfhearted work.

  Ill will won't help

  and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'état

  is so far not enough.

  Hearts beat inside eggs.

  Babies' skeletons grow.

  Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves

  and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

  Whoever claims that it's omnipotent

  is himself living proof

  that it's not.
>
  There's no life

  that couldn't be immortal

  if only for a moment.

  Death

  always arrives by that very moment too late.

  In vain it tugs at the knob

  of the invisible door.

  As far as you've come

  can't be undone.

  Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baraczak and Clare Cavanagh

  • • •

  That Morning

  STANLEY MOSS

  I got up a little after daybreak:

  I saw a Luna Moth had fallen

  between the window and a torn screen.

  I lifted the window, the wings broke

  on the floor, became green and silver powder.

  My eyes followed green, as if all green

  was a single web, past the Lombardy poplars,

  and the lilac hedge leading to the back road.

  I can believe the world

  might have been the color of hide or driftwood,

  but there was—and is—the gift of green,

  and a second gift we can perceive the green,

  although we are often blind to miracles.

  There was no resurrection of green and silver wings.

  They became a blue stain on an oak floor.

  I wish I had done something ordinary,

  performed an unknown, unseen miracle,

  raised the window the night before,

  let the chill November air come in.