437 Death poems

“and then looks at the stars” from the bed in the ambulance looks up at boughs of trees shifting quickly lit in blackness blackening soft, deep siren’s song—she died several times that night and only in the weeks to come started and started to come back then forward which is real life

The earth builds on the earth Castles and towers; The earth saith of the earth: All shall be ours. Yea, though they plan and reap The rye and the corn, Lo, they were bond to Sleep Ere they were born. Yea, though the blind earth sows For the fruit and the sheaf, They shall harvest the leaf of the rose And the dust of the leaf. Pride of the sword and power Are theirs at their need Who shall rule but the root of the flower The fall of the seed. They who follow the flesh In splendour and tears, They shall rest and clothe them afresh In the fulness of years. From the dream of the dust they came As the dawn set free. They shall pass as the flower of the flame Or the foam of the sea. The earth builds on the earth Castles and towers. The earth saith of the earth: All shall be ours.

In memory of Sara Wilkinson and for Liz Miles Eyelids, fall softly, from their gritted corners chalk, let it drizzle, let the streams flow thick with a waste glaze, let imagery run off its surplus of kaolin, choke feed of sediment plumed into the blue, tulipping its stem. Cress bunches thickening in shallows, flukes stinging flank heifers in their shove and jostle down a bank, drinking, mud caking lips. Eyelids, fall softly, let me linger interrupted behind the curtains billowing with images, how the unseeable sill even so snags, how the very point lights from behind, thoughts dispersing into folds slung aloft in sea mist, impermissible point breaks every motive falling back behind the eyelids that then fall. I breathe, I look, I carry forward, I can sense the last of you, taking walks of air thick with waste breath your form displaces. O curtain! O rail! I hate the thick floor beneath, breathe over a market quarrel, rise over the bass sawing at its stems to crash down the vault, let the vault branch recklessly, light-streams maze, air’s stirring carry song back and forth; I hear your recorder pipe, long for its repeats giving what-for to earth seeming to attenuate, rock is marked with your aeolian flow. Eyelids, fall softly, the cast of their fluttering fans across the inlet a white shadow, writes over deep-set floor captivated ripples. World, gaze out! Rise from a shrouded point.

He was led to be hanged. How to write this scene? Was it winter? Summer? From behind the fence across the street his mother watched. What should I call her? Let’s say, Antanina. And he is Maxim. Why Maxim, and not Basil or Yanak? The stones tucked themselves under his feet, two magpies stalked him, poplar to poplar. You’ve ever been hanged? Me, never yet. And that’s the problem. So are the magpies. Why should there be two, not one? The gutters silver with spring waters. So was it spring? Alright. By the courthouse, gray soldiers, lined up in a row. In the park — ladies. And ladies’ men. And where’s mother? “It’s best without her,” he thought. Do change her name. How’s then? A truck with sides already dropped — above it — a noose. Above a noose — a cloud. Who’s sitting at the wheel? His brother? Son? No, a son is pushing it. A brother then. And from behind the curtain in a palace next to the courthouse she watches. Marysya? Alright, Marysya. Those magpies. Soldiers. Water. Park. That cloud again. And glances from the crowd. “It’s him ... Not you ... Not me ... For that, thank God ... ” Bells ringing. Will he hear the bells? Behind Marysya stands the one who shares her bed. With blazing epaulets. And profile. And a hand around her waist. A river embraces the park. A river jammed with ice. Life blazes, rings. To sum it up, considering all mentioned: “He was led to be hanged.” Alone. Translated from the Belarusian

For James Kim (1971 — 2006) it could have happened to any of us a wrong turn down a logging road tires tunneled into snow a man’s undying love for his children moves satellites maps aerial images eighteen care packages dropped over 16 miles of the Siskiyou, bearing handwritten notes from a father to his son the signs you left for those who came after you a red t-shirt a wool sock, a child’s blue skirt layers of a life, stripped down to a family’s fate — the weight of being unseen — to travel a path back to what you knew at birth, the warmth of being held close brought home

The dead are having a party without us. They’ve left our worries behind. What a bore we’ve become with our resentment and sorrow, like former lovers united for once by our common complaints. Meanwhile the dead, shedding pilled sweaters, annoying habits, have become glamorous Western celebrities gone off to learn meditation. We trudge home through snow to a burst pipe, broken furnace, looking up at the sky where we imagine they journey to wish them bon voyage, waving till the jet on which they travel first class is out of sight— only the code of its vapor trail left behind.

I The clearest eyes in all the world they read With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed, As they the light of ages quick and dead, Closed now, forsake us: yet the shaft that slew Can slay not one of all the works we knew, Nor death discrown that many-laurelled head. The works of words whose life seems lightning wrought, And moulded of unconquerable thought, And quickened with imperishable flame, Stand fast and shine and smile, assured that nought May fade of all their myriad-moulded fame, Nor England's memory clasp not Browning's name. II Death, what hast thou to do with one for whom Time is not lord, but servant? What least part Of all the fire that fed his living heart, Of all the light more keen that sundawn's bloom That lit and led his spirit, strong as doom And bright as hope, can aught thy breath may dart Quench? Nay, thou knowest he knew thee what thou art, A shadow born of terror's barren womb, That brings not forth save shadows. What art thou, To dream, albeit thou breathe upon his brow, That power on him is given thee,—that thy breath Can make him less than love acclaims him now, And hears all time sound back the word it saith? What part hast thou then in his glory, Death? III A graceless doom it seems that bids us grieve: Venice and winter, hand in deadly hand, Have slain the lover of her sunbright strand And singer of a stormbright Christmas Eve. A graceless guerdon we that loved receive For all our love, from that the dearest land Love worshipped ever. Blithe and soft and bland, Too fair for storm to scathe or fire to cleave, Shone on our dreams and memories evermore The domes, the towers, the mountains and the shore That gird or guard thee, Venice: cold and black Seems now the face we loved as he of yore. We have given thee love—no stint, no stay, no lack: What gift, what gift is this thou hast given us back? IV But he—to him, who knows what gift is thine, Death? Hardly may we think or hope, when we Pass likewise thither where to-night is he, Beyond the irremeable outer seas that shine And darken round such dreams as half divine Some sunlit harbour in that starless sea Where gleams no ship to windward or to lee, To read with him the secret of thy shrine. There too, as here, may song, delight, and love, The nightingale, the sea-bird, and the dove, Fulfil with joy the splendour of the sky Till all beneath wax bright as all above: But none of all that search the heavens, and try The sun, may match the sovereign eagle's eye. V Among the wondrous ways of men and time He went as one that ever found and sought And bore in hand the lamp-like spirit of thought To illume with instance of its fire sublime The dusk of many a cloudlike age and clime. No spirit in shape of light and darkness wrought, No faith, no fear, no dream, no rapture, nought That blooms in wisdom, nought that burns in crime, No virtue girt and armed and helmed with light, No love more lovely than the snows are white, No serpent sleeping in some dead soul's tomb, No song-bird singing from some live soul's height, But he might hear, interpret, or illume With sense invasive as the dawn of doom. VI What secret thing of splendour or of shade Surmised in all those wandering ways wherein Man, led of love and life and death and sin, Strays, climbs, or cowers, allured, absorbed, afraid, Might not the strong and sunlike sense invade Of that full soul that had for aim to win Light, silent over time's dark toil and din, Life, at whose touch death fades as dead things fade? O spirit of man, what mystery moves in thee That he might know not of in spirit, and see The heart within the heart that seems to strive, The life within the life that seems to be, And hear, through all thy storms that whirl and drive, The living sound of all men's souls alive? VII He held no dream worth waking: so he said, He who stands now on death's triumphal steep, Awakened out of life wherein we sleep And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead. But never death for him was dark or dread: "Look forth" he bade the soul, and fear not. Weep, All ye that trust not in his truth, and keep Vain memory's vision of a vanished head As all that lives of all that once was he Save that which lightens from his word: but we, Who, seeing the sunset-coloured waters roll, Yet know the sun subdued not of the sea, Nor weep nor doubt that still the spirit is whole, And life and death but shadows of the soul.

When I died, the circulating library Which I built up for Spoon River, And managed for the good of inquiring minds, Was sold at auction on the public square, As if to destroy the last vestige Of my memory and influence. For those of you who could not see the virtue Of knowing Volney's "Ruins" as well as Butler's "Analogy" And "Faust" as well as "Evangeline," Were really the power in the village, And often you asked me, "What is the use of knowing the evil in the world?" I am out of your way now, Spoon River, Choose your own good and call it good. For I could never make you see That no one knows what is good Who knows not what is evil; And no one knows what is true Who knows not what is false.

Oh, but to fade, and live we know not where, To be a cold obstruction and to groan! This sensible, warm woman to become A prudish clod; and the delighted spirit To live and die alone, or to reside With married sisters, and to have the care Of half a dozen children, not your own; And driven, for no one wants you, Round the pendant world; or worse than worse Of those that disappointment and pure spite Have driven to madness: ’Tis too horrible! The weariest and most troubled married life That age, ache, penury, or jealousy Can lay on nature, is a paradise To being an old maid. That very time I saw, (but thou couldst not,) Walking between the garden and the barn, Reuben, all armed; a certain aim he took At a young chicken standing by a post, And loosed his bullet smartly from his gun, As he would kill a hundred thousand hens. But I might see young Reuben’s fiery shot Lodged in the chaste board of the garden fence, And the domesticated fowl passed on, In henly meditation, bullet free. My father had a daughter got a man, As it might be, perhaps, were I good-looking, I should, your lordship. And what’s her residence? A hut my lord, she never owned a house, But let her husband, like a graceless scamp, Spend all her little means,—she thought she ought,— And in a wretched chamber, on an alley, She worked like masons on a monument, Earning their bread. Was not this love indeed?

When bones and flesh have finished their business together, we lay them carefully, in positions they’re willing to keep, and cover them over. Their eyes and ours won’t meet anymore. We hope. It’s one of the oldest rules we mostly follow. In the deep Stone Age in Shanidar, now Iraq, someone or all of them laid or threw on the grandfather’s chest whatever was blooming— St. Barnaby’s thistle, yarrow, hollyhock... His was their only burial before the frost. For millennia, then, the dead might go under with thistle, quantities of red ocher, a chunk of meat. Now we have everlasting bouquets of plastic; now we have hundreds a day to bag and box and pickle to re-cross the Atlantic. Light a row of oil wells and kneel on sand too much embroiled for tombs. Regrettably, something of the smell is of bodies suddenly buried in fallen stones. But some is incense, pinches of pulverized Baghdad rising in ceremonial smoke: dust of combatants, onlookers, miscellaneous limbs, contents of hovels, contents of museums, ancient pollen of yarrow and hollyhock.