437 Death poems

I Calm was the sea to which your course you kept, Oh, how much calmer than all southern seas! Many your nameless mates, whom the keen breeze Wafted from mothers that of old have wept. All souls of children taken as they slept Are your companions, partners of your ease, And the green souls of all these autumn trees Are with you through the silent spaces swept. Your virgin body gave its gentle breath Untainted to the gods. Why should we grieve, But that we merit not your holy death? We shall not loiter long, your friends and I; Living you made it goodlier to live, Dead you will make it easier to die. II With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, your mellow ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,— What I keep of you, or you rob of me. III Your bark lies anchored in the peaceful bight Until a kinder wind unfurl her sail; Your docile spirit, wingèd by this gale, Hath at the dawning fled into the light. And I half know why heaven deemed it right Your youth, and this my joy in youth, should fail; God hath them still, for ever they avail, Eternity hath borrowed that delight. For long ago I taught my thoughts to run Where all the great things live that lived of yore, And in eternal quiet float and soar; There all my loves are gathered into one, Where change is not, nor parting any more, Nor revolution of the moon and sun. IV In my deep heart these chimes would still have rung To toll your passing, had you not been dead; For time a sadder mask than death may spread Over the face that ever should be young. The bough that falls with all its trophies hung Falls not too soon, but lays its flower-crowned head Most royal in the dust, with no leaf shed Unhallowed or unchiselled or unsung. And though the after world will never hear The happy name of one so gently true, Nor chronicles write large this fatal year, Yet we who loved you, though we be but few, Keep you in whatsoe’er is good, and rear In our weak virtues monuments to you.

Beginning on a line by Silvio Rodríguez How will it taste—the beer the gravedigger will drink after bestowing your dirt coat? What will he say—you keeled the outrigger too south, & when the breakers rolled, no boats heard your Mayday? & will he ask his friends at the bar—if someone calls a Mayday & there is no one at the other end of any radio, did Kevin A. González really exist? O second person, what would you do without you? Where would Kevin A. González hide? Our bond is over. The red of the rockets’ glare has faded. Your grave has been dug. Gone too are the days when I tried to speak through you.

Drowned together in his car in Lake Chippewa. It was a bright cold starry night on Lake Chippewa. Lake Chippewa was a “living” lake then, though soon afterward it would choke and die. In the bright cold morning after we could spy them only through a patch of ice brushed clear of snow. Scarcely three feet below, they were oblivious of us. Together beneath the ice in each other’s arms. Jean-Marie’s head rested on Troy’s shoulder. Their hair had floated up and was frozen. Their eyes were open in the perfect lucidity of death. Calmly they sat upright. Not a breath! It was 1967, there were no seat belts to keep them apart. Beautiful as mannequins in Slater Brothers’ window. Faces flawless, not a blemish. Yet—you could believe they might be breath- ing, for some trick of scintillate light revealed tiny bubbles in the ice, and a motion like a smile in Jean-Marie’s perfect face. How far Troy’d driven the car onto Lake Chippewa before the ice creaked, and cracked, and opened like the parting of giant jaws—at least fifty feet! This was a feat like his 7-foot-3.8-inch high jump. In the briny snow you could see the car tracks along the shore where in summer sand we’d sprawl and soak up sun in defiance of skin carcinomas to come. And you could see how deftly he’d turned the wheel onto the ice at just the right place. And on the ice you could see how he’d made the tires spin and grab and Jean-Marie clutching his hand Oh oh oh! The sinking would be silent, and slow. Eastern edge of Lake Chippewa, shallower than most of the lake but deep enough at twelve feet to suck down Mr. Dupuy’s Chevy so all that was visible from shore was the gaping ice wound. And then in the starry night a drop to -5 degrees Fahrenheit and ice freezing over the sunken car. Who would have guessed it, of Lake Chippewa! Now in the morning through the swept ice there’s a shocking intimacy just below. With our mittens we brush away powder snow. With our boots we kick away ice chunks. Lie flat and stare through the ice Seeing Jean-Marie Schuter and Troy Dupuy as we’d never seen them in life. Our breaths steam in Sunday-morning light. It will be something we must live with— the couple do not care about our astonishment. Perfect in love, and needing no one to applaud as they’d been oblivious of our applause at the Herkimer Junior High prom where they were crowned Queen and King three years before. (In Herkimer County, New York, you grew up fast. The body matured, the brain lagged behind, like the slowest runner on the track team we’d applaud with affection mistaken for teen mockery.) No one wanted to summon help just yet. It was a dreamy silence above ice as below. And the ice a shifting hue—silvery, ghost-gray, pale blue—as the sky shifts overhead like a frowning parent.What! Lake Chippewa was where some of us went ice-fishing with our grandfathers. Sometimes, we skated. Summers there were speedboats, canoes. There’d been drownings in Lake Chippewa we’d heard but no one of ours. Police, fire-truck, ambulance sirens would rend the air. Strangers would shout at one another. We’d be ordered back—off the ice of Lake Chippewa that shone with beauty and onto the littered shore. By harsh daylight made to see Mr. Dupuy’s 1963 Chevy hooked like a great doomed fish. All that privacy yanked upward pitiless and streaming icy rivulets! We knew it was wrong to disturb the frozen lovers and make of them mere bodies. Sweet-lethal embrace of Lake Chippewa But no embrace can survive thawing. One of us, Gordy Garrison, would write a song, “Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die” (echo of Bill Monroe’s “I Traced Her Little Footprints in the Snow”), which he’d sing with his band the Raiders, accompanying himself on the Little Martin guitar he’d bought from his cousin Art Garrison when Art enlisted in the U.S. Navy and for a while it was all you’d hear at Herkimer High, where the Raiders played for Friday-night dances in the gym, but then we graduated and things changed and nothing more came of Gordy’s song or of the Raiders. “TOO YOUNG TO MARRY BUT NOT TOO YOUNG TO DIE” was the headline in the Herkimer Packet. We scissored out the front-page article, kept it for decades in a bedroom drawer. (No one ever moves in Herkimer except those who move away, and never come back.) The clipping is yellowed, deeply creased, and beginning to tear. When some of us stare at the photos our hearts cease beating—oh, just a beat! It was something we’d learned to live with— there’d been no boy desperate to die with any of us. We’d have accepted, probably—yes. Deep breath, shuttered eyes—yes, Troy. Secret kept yellowed and creased in the drawer, though if you ask, laughingly we’d deny it. We see Gordy sometimes, and his wife, June. Our grand- children are friends. Hum Gordy’s old song to make Gordy blush a fierce apricot hue but it seems cruel, we’re all on blood thinners now.

I will teach you          my townspeople how to perform          a funeral — for you have it          over a troop of artists— unless one should          scour the world — you have the ground sense          necessary. See! the hearse leads. I begin with          a design for a hearse. For Christ's sake          not black — nor white either —          and not polished! Let it be weathered —          like a farm wagon — with gilt wheels          (this could be applied fresh          at small expense) or no wheels at all: a rough dray to          drag over the ground. Knock the glass out! My God-glass,          my townspeople! For what purpose?          Is it for the dead to look out or          for us to see how well he is housed          or to see the flowers or          the lack of them — or what? To keep the rain          and snow from him? He will have a          heavier rain soon: pebbles and dirt          and what not. Let there be no glass — and no upholstery          phew! and no little          brass rollers and small easy wheels          on the bottom — my townspeople          what are you thinking of? A rough          plain hearse then with gilt wheels          and no top at all. On this          the coffin lies by its own weight. No wreathes please — especially no          hot house flowers. Some common memento          is better, something he prized          and is known by: his old clothes —          a few books perhaps — God knows what!          You realize how we are          about these things my townspeople — something will be found —          anything even flowers          if he had come to that. So much for          the hearse. For heaven's sake though          see to the driver! Take off          the silk hat! In fact that's no place          at all for him — up there          unceremoniously dragging our friend out          to his own dignity! Bring him down —          bring him down! Low and inconspicuous!          I'd not have him ride on the wagon at all —          damn him — the undertaker's          understrapper! Let him hold          the reins and walk          at the side and inconspicuously          too! Then briefly          as to yourselves: Walk behind —          as they do in France, seventh class, or          if you ride Hell take curtains!          Go with some show of inconvenience;          sit openly — to the weather          as to grief. Or do you think          you can shut grief in? What — from us?          We who have perhaps nothing to lose?          Share with us share with us —          it will be money in your pockets. Go now I think you are          ready.

I am not asleep, but I see a limb, the fingers of death, the ghost of an anonymous painter leaving the prints of death on the wall; the bright feathers of soft birds blowing away in the forest; the bones of fish and the white backs of strange women; your breathing like the slow thunder on the other side of some river as you sleep beside me; old dancing teachers weeping in their offices; toads with bellies as quiet as girls asleep in mansions, dreaming of saddles and pulling the sheets between their legs; fireflies going to sleep on moonseed flowers around a plantation gazebo at dawn; a girl sweating in bed; hawks drifting through the moon; a woman’s hair, the flavor of death, floating in the fog like a flag on a ship full of ghosts, the ghosts of soldiers searching for the graves of their mothers; june bugs listening to Leoncavallo; christ weeping on Coney Island, inevitable, like a fissure in a faggot’s ass; a widower with no sons, a lonesome janitor, a worm in the sun, the dusty sockets of poets, who have lost their eyes, their

(To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment) I would be one with the dark, dark earth:— Follow the plough with a yokel tread. I would be part of the Indian corn, Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead. I would be one with the lavish earth, Eating the bee-stung apples red: Walking where lambs walk on the hills; By oak-grove paths to the pools be led. I would be one with the dark-bright night When sparkling skies and the lightning wed— Walking on with the vicious wind By roads whence even the dogs have fled. I would be one with the sacred earth On to the end, till I sleep with the dead. Terror shall put no spears through me. Peace shall jewel my shroud instead. I shall be one with all pit-black things Finding their lowering threat unsaid: Stars for my pillow there in the gloom,— Oak-roots arching about my head! Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth, Acorns fall round my breast that bled. Children shall weave there a flowery chain, Squirrels on acorn-hearts be fed:— Fruit of the traveller-heart of me, Fruit of my harvest-songs long sped: Sweet with the life of my sunburned days When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red.

To Mary Sidney In your lace ruff you resemble a giant snowflake or a spider web pearled with dew. What poets you catch in your symmetries, at your long table at Wilton what wits (Spenser, Fulke- Greville, Drayton) pitch into the roasted piglet, stewed apples, carp. If you rowzed God up, He knocked you back on your heels, Lady— “O God, why hast thou thus Repulst, and scattred us?”—Through the high windows at Wilton seethe rumors of battle, Philip’s pussing thigh, death in the Lowlands. Mother Wrong, Daughter Strife stalk the cities; still you keep house with grammar, you salt the psalms for long preserving. “As smoke in wind, as wax at fire doth waste” the unjust dissolve. Your stanzas stay, still sting the tongue. Dawn finds you kneeling on stone, calling again the bleak God you believe will answer you. You mix medicines, you write in invisible ink. But Time trumps Fame which undoes Death which masters Chastity and Love—which leaves Eternity, your Master wrote, master of all. And like your lace, your lines shine, not pale, “but whitely, and more whitely pure than snow on windless hill that flaking falls, as one whom labour did to rest allure.” Translate us too, rough line by line, into your crystalline severe design.

( Morton St. Pier) Lying here Flat on my back I can almost see Myself in the morgue On a slab, tagged I am the corpse No one will have Not stabbed, stored No one takes my life It goes by the board

For Andrew O’Hagan Three moons in the sky the night they found him drowned in Sawtan’s Bog; just his cap, sitting there and his wee fat hands poking out. It was no loss to the village, I told them next morning, and the villagers agreed. Horn-daft, he was, havering and glaikit and scaring the children. I mind that time he picked up a mouse and ate it, quick, in two mouthfuls; set the tail aside on the ground like a cocktail stick. I used her well, after that, his Jennie, still in her widow’s weeds, gilping into her whenever I could, in the barn or the boathouse or off in the fields. She slipped two or three out at least, and sank each one in a lobster creel. Her head was away by the end, as mad as her man and no good to me. She sleeps now under Beinn Ruadhainn, her face covered in ivy, scab, and sticky-willow. The dreams came then. Last night, the burning loch, so full of bairns they bobbed to the surface with their hair on fire; black snow; fingers coming through the floorboards; rain like razor blades; the foosty-faced man, there at every corner, hands furred with grey-mould. And her, as always, star-naked, hatching in the herring-nets. The last I remember was my body being driven with sticks through the town to Sawtan’s Brae, and hanged. I broke from sleep and sat up sweating, dream-fleyed in the dark. I groped around for the matches and the matches were put in my hand.

Those who are asleep in the earth have an avian sense of the way. Gone, they sleep with shoes on, ready to rise and go to the pink, dispensable, barefooted insomniacs who had laced up for them the last pair of shoes.