437 Death poems

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations O, Death! O, Death! An example of apostrophe: an address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present; see glossary definition here). <learning/glossary-term/apostrophe>About this Poem. This poem, published in 1842, is a revision of Whitman’s first published poem “Our Future Lot,” from 1838. In that 20-line poem, similar wording includes: “With flashing hope, and gloomy fear” (line 2); “The troubled heart and wondrous form / Must both alike decay (lines 7-8); “Dull senseless limbs, and ashy face, / But where, O Nature! where will be / My mind’s abiding place? (lines 10-12); and the final line “The common doom—to die!” a black and pierceless pall pall A dark cloud or covering of smoke or dust Hangs round thee, and the future state; No eye may see, no mind may grasp That mystery of fate. This brain, which now alternate throbs With swelling hope and gloomy fear; This heart, with all the changing hues, That mortal passions bear— This curious frame of human mould, Where unrequited cravings play, This brain, and heart, and wondrous form Must all alike decay. The leaping blood will stop its flow; The hoarse death-struggle pass; the cheek Lay bloomless, and the liquid tongue Will then forget to speak. The grave will take me; earth will close O’er cold dull limbs and ashy face; But where, O, Nature, where shall be The soul’s abiding place? Will it e’en e’en Traditional poetic contraction for “even,” pronounced as one syllable to fit the meter of the line live? For though its light Must shine till from the body torn; Then, when the oil of life is spent, Still shall the taper burn? O, powerless is this struggling brain To rend rend Cause great emotional pain to (a person or their heart) the mighty mystery; In dark, uncertain awe it waits The common doom, to die.

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

If you can’t feel love in life you won’t feel it in death, nor Will you feel the tulip’s skin, nor the soft gravel Of childhood under cheek. You will have writhed Across the page for a hard couplet, a firm rhyme, ass High as any downward dog, and cutlass arms Lashing any mother who tries to pass: Let’s be frank About the cost of spurs, mothers like peonies Whirling in storm drains, families sunk before Reaching open water. The empty boudoir Will haunt, but not how you imagine it will. Nothing, not even death frees mothers From the cutting board, the balloons, their Lack of resistance, thoughts, he said, quick As tulips staggering across the quad. She heard, I like my women splayed Out, red. Read swollen, domesticated, Wanting out. The tulips were never warm My loves, they never smelled of spring, They never marked the path out of loneliness, Never led me home, nor to me, nor away From what spring, or red, or tulips Could never be.

I Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone— Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. II Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead who stood In life before thee are again In death around thee—and their will Shall overshadow thee: be still. III The night, tho’ clear, shall frown— And the stars shall look not down From their high thrones in the heaven, With light like Hope to mortals given— But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever. IV Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, Now are visions ne’er to vanish; From thy spirit shall they pass No more—like dew-drop from the grass. V The breeze—the breath of God—is still— And the mist upon the hill, Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token— How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!

After Lucille Clifton Vulture, follow me up: here is the arm my mother held me aloft with (as well as she could, until she couldn’t), it is cut free of her body now, pulled away from her shoulder, away from her breath, as you, Vulture, point your wing toward her offered heart, toward me — let’s pound her fingers into paste, pound the hand open, come down, I chant, each word opens the sky, the clouds need to be warned — once she was hand & now she is wing, once she was dirt & now she is air, she was food & now she is bird, she was lifted & now she is gone.

Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree. The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass, The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls, But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous In the blest Nirvana of eternal light! Go to the good heart that is my husband, Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love: i Tell him that my love for you, no less than my love for him Wrought out my destiny i that through the flesh I won spirit, and through spirit, peace. There is no marriage in heaven, But there is love.

In the longer view it doesn’t matter. However, it’s that having lived, it matters. So that every death breaks you apart. You find yourself weeping at the door of your own kitchen, overwhelmed by loss. And you find yourself weeping as you pass the homeless person head in hands resigned on a cement step, the wire basket on wheels right there. Like stopped film, or a line of Vallejo, or a sketch of the mechanics of a wing by Leonardo. All pauses in space, a violent compression of meaning in an instant within the meaningless. Even staring into the dim shapes at the farthest edge; accepting that blur.

Not forced to fall for hideous Phaon, nor to drift dreamlike from a Victorian cliff, pursued by visions of slender limbs, peach-soft hair, dewy violets clustered in an unwilling lap, not exiled on a distant island for writing smartly about love, not called amoral nor forgotten, not murdered by a jealous lover, nor weakened from drink, did not make an incision in the veins, never murdered in a tavern at twenty-nine nor thought mad, released immediately from St. Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, freed from Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, cured of syphilis, not mad nor ruined by drink nor shot in the head, the rope unknotted and fluidly slid from the lamp- post, sauntered away with a sideways crawl up the Champs-Élysées, never sickened from drink nor drowned in the Gulf of Spezia, the heart kept tight swam madly toward shore, disappeared down the glistening beach skipping happily in the direction of England, staved off fever while fighting for Greeks, lived, wrote, erased the blood-stained pillowcase, married Fanny, moved to Finland, fathered several pink-skinned children, lay down for a rest in the Baltimore street, got up confused about Spanish port and went to the graveyard to sleep it off, laudanum, opium, stroke, paralysis, aphasia, angels, threads of exotic Delacroix visions, but everything was put right when mom said, "Come on home, I want to care for you," left the house and walked into the river until the water level covered the hairline then shed the heavy Edwardian garments and broke into a birdlike breaststroke exclaiming, "How lovely to be free of the sickbed!" never destroyed by drink, sang while removing the shrapnel from a soldier, recovered from the Spanish flu, returned to Poland all debts forgiven by appreciative readers from the Congo, replaced the bottle of Lysol among toxic rats enjoying a sauna under the sink, did not pull the trigger or push the chair out from under the revolution while screaming about the army of the arts, put on a jacket and sailed to Mexico, calmly came up on deck, folded the jacket over the rail, and then— arrested by a vision of spread-eagled sailors descending like angels through the turquoise sky—decided not to swallow the sea, freed from Payne Whitney, walked right on through the psychiatric state hospital and out the other side, had no psychotic break while on acid in a land of dreamlike torch singers masquerading as Satanists, never touched the stuff, the dead liver tissue miraculously mended, smoker's cough silenced, cured by the sea air of old gray Gloucester, jumped into the beach taxi and drove down the beach gesticulating gaily toward the setting sun, not undone, unloved, forgotten, nor filled with despair, not punished for talking with angels, not unhappy nor alone, not misrepresented nor misunderstood nor nauseous from drink or drugs or depression, loved respected and read long-lived healthy and happy celebrated by all in life before dying contented in a comfortable bed.

Soon I will make my appearance But first I must take off my rings And swords and lay them out all Along the lupine banks of the forbidden river In reckoning the days I have Left on this earth I will use No fingers

This is the poem of death. There is only one and no other. Every one is an occasion, one way or another, and the last poem is this poem of death. It is an occasion like no other. I will no longer lope after elegance, beauty’s body, or love’s wonder. I will be sorry for everything I was, and for everything I was not. I speak to you as if you were my brother. I will forgive everyone. Death will make this possible. There will be no other. Death was in the mind before thought or love, in ourselves, and in our lovers. The poem of death is speechless. A companion will appear again like another self, like your brother. Enough now, enough has been said. The spinning leaf will spin like no other.