437 Death poems

His body ahead Of him on the bed He faces his feet Sees himself dead, A corpse complete With legs and chest And belly between Swelling the scene Of the crime you left, Taking your time, Angel of Death

In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned in a triangle of trees swims dappled with leaf shadow, sketched light arch within arch delicate as fingernail moons. The green doors should not be locked. Doors of fern and flower should not be shut. Louis Sullivan, I sit on your grave. It is not now good weather for prophets. Sun eddies on the steelsmoke air like sinking honey. On the inner green door of the Getty tomb (a thighbone's throw from your stone) a marvel of growing, blooming, thrusting into seed: how all living wreathe and insinuate in the circlet of repetition that never repeats: ever new birth never rebirth. Each tide pool microcosm spiraling from your hand. Sullivan, you had another five years when your society would give you work. Thirty years with want crackling in your hands. Thirty after years with cities flowering and turning grey in your beard. All poets are unemployed nowadays. My country marches in its sleep. The past structures a heavy mausoleum hiding its iron frame in masonry. Men burn like grass while armies grow. Thirty years in the vast rumbling gut of this society you stormed to be used, screamed no louder than any other breaking voice. The waste of a good man bleeds the future that's come in Chicago, in flat America, where the poor still bleed from the teeth, housed in sewers and filing cabinets, where prophets may spit into the wind till anger sleets their eyes shut, where this house that dances the seasons and the braid of all living and the joy of a man making his new good thing is strange, irrelevant as a meteor, in Chicago, in flat America in this year of our burning.

Maybe because I was married and felt secure and dead at once, I listened to my father’s urgings about “the future” and bought this double plot on the hillside with a view of the bare white church, the old elms, and the creek below. I plan now to use both plots, luxuriantly spreading out in the middle of a big double bed. —But no, finally, my burial has nothing to do with marriage, this lying here in these same bones will be as real as anything I can imagine for who I’ll be then, as real as anything undergone, going back and forth to “the world” out there, and here to this one spot on earth I really know. Once I came in fast and low in a little plane and when I looked down at the church, the trees I’ve felt with my hands, the neighbors’ houses and the family farm, and I saw how tiny what I loved or knew was, it was like my children going on with their plans and griefs at a distance and nothing I could do about it. But I wanted to reach down and pat it, while letting it know I wouldn’t interfere for the world, the world being everything this isn’t, this unknown buried in the known.

They were not traditionalists. They could bear the innovations of plot. They could not wait to landscape the plot. They had plans for a bed of pansies because pansies hardly ever die in a cold snap, because pansies are hardy despite the name. When they shoved the trowel into the soil it was with his hand on the handle and hers                                                                            adding force. They knew there were only nine types of people in the world and they knew which ones would close the deal. They knew the shirkers by sight. They had options. They knew about Required Communication. About how I feel and you feel. When there was a question of who did the dishes and who did the cat box, it was settled in-house and never required an outside contractor. But the pansies got stem spot, leaf rot, and mildew. When they looked at their options it seemed there weren’t really that many after all. They swore to uphold the bonds and the principles and the yelling. They swore to oral sex. They dressed to the nines and they walked the aisle. They stood up and received the standard narration.

We are waiting, grandmother and I, for the white bird. The black bird grows larger above our heads, Its immense wings spreading as it dives down To pull her away piece by piece. Grandmother is not ashamed; She lies open before me, white as bone, Glistening with morphine, giving me this last gift. The hungry bird chitters and squawks, circling. I will stay until the bones are picked clean; I will stay until the wide wings swallow the last of the light, Until the white bird is free at last.

The casseroles just showed up. According to her sister a symbolic casting of the feminine, not gender but physics, dear— according to a friend she looked just like her sister, green bathrobe mid-afternoon, suitcase still in the trunk. She’d carried him dead for days. Out above the reeds a sphere of birds stretches and knots, rises as one brown then belly-white. Oh the hunger when it came filled every chair.

Wake me in South Galway, or better yet In Clare. You'll know the pub I have in mind. Improvise a hearse—one of those decrepit Postal vans would suit me down to the ground— A rust-addled Renault, Kelly green with a splash Of Oscar Wilde yellow stirred in to clash With the dazzling perfect meadows and limestone On the coast road from Kinvara down toward Ballyvaughan. Once you've got in off the road at Newquay Push aside some barstools and situate me Up in front by the door where the musicians sit, Their table crowded with pints and a blue teapot, A pouch of Drum, some rolling papers and tin Whistles. Ask Charlie Piggott to play a tune That sounds like loss and Guinness, turf smoke and rain, While Brenda dips in among the punters like a hedge-wren. Will I hear it? Maybe not. But I hear it now. The smoke of the music fills my nostrils, I feel the attuned Box and fiddle in harness, pulling the plough Of the melody, turning the bog-dark, root-tangled ground. Even the ceramic collie on the windowsill Cocks an ear as the tune lifts and the taut sail Of the Galway hooker trills wildly in its frame on the wall, Rippling to the salt pulse and seabreeze of a West Clare reel. Many a night, two octaves of one tune, We sat here side by side, your body awake To a jig or slide, me mending the drift of a line As the music found a path to my notebook. Lost in its lilt and plunge I would disappear Into the heathery freedom of a slow air Or walk out under the powerful stars to clear My head of thought and breathe their cooled-down fire. When my own session ends, let me leave like that, Porous to the wind that blows off the ocean. Goodbye to the company and step into the night Completed and one-off, like a well-played tune— Beyond the purified essence of hearth fires Rising from the life of the parish, past smoke and stars, Released from everything I've done and known. I won't go willingly, it's true, but I'll be gone.

Warm summer sun, Shine kindly here, Warm southern wind, Blow softly here. Green sod above, Lie light, lie light. Good night, dear heart, Good night, good night.

Until wolf-light I will count my sheep, Adumbrated, uncomedic, as they are. One is perdu, two, qualm, three Is sprawl, four, too late, Night is already a thirsty county in Texas, Salt flat and unremitting Blacktop dry as my mouth, And your elastic vowels, my genial, My electric ghost, my Radio’s lonely station. Because the spectacle Of suffering corrupts us, all punishments Are now executive, offstage. Most presume you a fable: Echoes of approaching bootheels That harry labyrinths of concrete corridors, Or hooded in burlap. We are convicted As we are also pardoned: He cherished His lawn, or afterwards he covered The victim’s face. You make no judgments Yourself. Only in bursal tones, Tactful as the file box That shows, if opened, the neon, pleading heart Of Jesus wrapped in barbed wire, You perform penalties others have scripted, so Untroubled by so many. How long I have listened to you For news of the opal distances,

The skies they were ashen and sober; The leaves they were crispéd and sere— The leaves they were withering and sere; It was night in the lonesome October Of my most immemorial year; It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, In the misty mid region of Weir— It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. Here once, through an alley Titanic, Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul— Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. These were days when my heart was volcanic As the scoriac rivers that roll— As the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek In the ultimate climes of the pole— That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the boreal pole. Our talk had been serious and sober, But our thoughts they were palsied and sere— Our memories were treacherous and sere— For we knew not the month was October, And we marked not the night of the year— (Ah, night of all nights in the year!) We noted not the dim lake of Auber— (Though once we had journeyed down here)— We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. And now, as the night was senescent And star-dials pointed to morn— As the star-dials hinted of morn— At the end of our path a liquescent And nebulous lustre was born, Out of which a miraculous crescent Arose with a duplicate horn— Astarte's bediamonded crescent Distinct with its duplicate horn. And I said—"She is warmer than Dian: She rolls through an ether of sighs— She revels in a region of sighs: She has seen that the tears are not dry on These cheeks, where the worm never dies, And has come past the stars of the Lion To point us the path to the skies— To the Lethean peace of the skies— Come up, in despite of the Lion, To shine on us with her bright eyes— Come up through the lair of the Lion, With love in her luminous eyes." But Psyche, uplifting her finger, Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust— Her pallor I strangely mistrust:— Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger! Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must." In terror she spoke, letting sink her Wings till they trailed in the dust— In agony sobbed, letting sink her Plumes till they trailed in the dust— Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming: Let us on by this tremulous light! Let us bathe in this crystalline light! Its Sybilic splendor is beaming With Hope and in Beauty to-night:— See!—it flickers up the sky through the night! Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, And be sure it will lead us aright— We safely may trust to a gleaming That cannot but guide us aright, Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night." Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, And tempted her out of her gloom— And conquered her scruples and gloom: And we passed to the end of the vista, But were stopped by the door of a tomb— By the door of a legended tomb; And I said—"What is written, sweet sister, On the door of this legended tomb?" She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume— 'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!" Then my heart it grew ashen and sober As the leaves that were crispèd and sere— As the leaves that were withering and sere, And I cried—"It was surely October On this very night of last year That I journeyed—I journeyed down here— That I brought a dread burden down here— On this night of all nights in the year, Oh, what demon has tempted me here? Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber— This misty mid region of Weir— Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber— In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir." Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it Have been that the woodlandish ghouls— The pitiful, the merciful ghouls— To bar up our way and to ban it From the secret that lies in these wolds— From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds— Had drawn up the spectre of a planet From the limbo of lunary souls— This sinfully scintillant planet From the Hell of the planetary souls?"