437 Death poems

Such, such is Death: no triumph: no defeat: Only an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, A merciful putting away of what has been. And this we know: Death is not Life, effete, Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen So marvellous things know well the end not yet. Victor and vanquished are a-one in death: Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say, “Come, what was your record when you drew breath?” But a big blot has hid each yesterday So poor, so manifestly incomplete. And your bright Promise, withered long and sped, Is touched, stirs, rises, opens and grows sweet And blossoms and is you, when you are dead.

We never saw the ghost, though he was there— we knew from the raindrops tapping on the eaves. We never saw him, and we didn’t care. Each day, new sunshine tumbled through the air; evenings, the moonlight rustled in dark leaves. We never saw the ghost, though: he was there, if ever, when the wind tousled our hair and prickled goosebumps up and down thin sleeves; we never saw him.   And we didn’t care to step outside our room at night, or dare click off the nightlight: call it fear of thieves. We never saw the ghost, though he was there in sunlit dustmotes drifting anywhere, in light-and-shadow, such as the moon weaves. We never saw him, though, and didn’t care, until at last we saw him everywhere. We told nobody.   Everyone believes we never saw the ghost (if he was there), we never saw him and we didn’t care.

When you take the lost road You come to the snow And when you find the snow You get down on your hands and knees Like a sick dog That’s been eating the grasses of graveyards For twenty centuries. When you take the lost road You find woman Who has no fear of light Who can kill two cocks at once Light which has no fear of cocks And cocks who can’t call in the snow. You find lovers who’ve been listening For the same roosters to sing For twenty centuries Roosters that have swallowed stones Out of each other’s tracks But have never met Anywhere on the road. When you take the lost road You find the bright feathers of morning Laid out in proportion to snow and light And when the snow gets lost on the road Then the hot wind might blow from the south And there is sadness in bed for twenty centuries And everyone is chewing the grass on the graves again. When you get lost You come to the moon in the field The light all lovers soil The sheet no one leaves clean The light cocks are afraid to cross The same moon woman danced under For twenty centuries With blood on her face. When you get lost on the road You run into the dead Who have broken down stones In their throats for twenty centuries I saw two little crazy boys crying Because it was morning And when morning comes it comes In the morning and never at night. I saw two security police taking out a man’s balls And I saw two little crazy boys Crying by the road who wouldn’t go away But two has never been a number Because it’s only legal to pass one at a time It’s only a drum you can carry but you can’t beat It’s the evidence they need to make you disappear.

I. Maggots in the food, maggots in the floorboards, maggots in the recurring nightmare in which, lying down with a rugged adonis, I wake to find him almost nibbled away. Certainly signs of death are everywhere, but love is more than combat with worms and cannot be so glibly explained away; I do not tremble or knock my knees to keep the maggots slumbering below ground, or crush them underfoot by flocking to everything they are not: raucous gatherings, stolen kisses. On the contrary, I come away from parties adoring what is wormlike in them: the unrisen soufflé, the precocious boy’s octogenarian sayings, the drooping lids of the hostess, someone’s death rattle of a laugh. Certainly love has commerce with vermin, but it is a friendly partnership, not a league of discord; a hacking cough gives proof of a full life, a passing stranger seems all the stronger when one foot is sinking quietly into the grave. II. But is is this lingering horror of dust that makes me pull us out of the cold earth any way I know how: because I strive for heaven in little rooms, visit you in order to suck your blood, then spread it over pipes and daffodils, and shove you up to the vacant sky, where you hover like a stone-cold, tedious statue who never dies, you, poor pawn, are a jack-in-the-box gone haywire, and I am a grinning humanist with bad dreams.

Your husband is stretched out on the ground as if he were listening for something. Ask him to come back to the table. Whatever was there is now here.

for Spalding Gray The West and North winds both lover us, wanting, bitter, to bring us in close in the small hold. Tongues loll and laze, while the flap and snapping above: crazy wanderlust. The basin must cradle, keep her passengers, though the hero abandoned the ferry for the real sea. Is nothing worthy? Wallet on bench. Wallet at home. Wallet at rest. The child, even his cries, must the ship balance, makes me wild to right this unhumanly keeling. I have six arms, am the dismembered figurehead, ballast, breasts covered in blue scales. I am at rudder, at bow, at mast, at rigging, at deck, at halyard, at stern, when the hold explodes with screaming. One boy has stolen the other’s marble. The boat shifts, tilts. A wallet washes up against us. Is this what you meant when you said a family steadied you? Is this what they see when they see me and my six handless arms, shining torso and cuspid humor? The figurehead has no need for eyelids, must on-guard, vigil, dry eyed. But she dreams. Dreams. The sail, its fine apparel, its linen long-shadow: a tiny hand opening, budlike

I don't own an exquisite way to move around in the night —Doug Benezra It occurs to me that, when I die, they might find the necklace I dropped behind the bed and wonder how long it was there, and whether I’d missed it. But will they care about my favorite color, my long-range plans, or my habit of searching myself for signs of rust?

In Spanish he whispers there is no time left. It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat, the ache of some field song in Salvador. The wind along the prison, cautious as Francisco’s hands on the inside, touching the walls as he walks, it is his wife’s breath slipping into his cell each night while he imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country. There is nothing one man will not do to another. 1979

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– I hold it towards you.

The first morning after anyone’s death, is it important To know that fields are wet, that the governess is Naked but with a scarf still covering her head, that She’s sitting on a gardener who’s wearing Just a blue shirt, or that he’s sitting on a chair in the kitchen. They look like they are rowing while instead outside in the mist Two boats are passing on the river, the gardener’s mouth Is opening: A white, screaming bird lifts off the river into the trees, Flies a short distance and is joined By a second bird, but then as if to destroy everything The two white birds are met by a third.The night Always fails.