437 Death poems

The my becomes a the, becomes the state’s the coroner’s, a law’s, something assignable, by me, alone, though it will not be the I I am on leaving it, no longer to be designated human or corpse:cadaver it will be, nameless patient stored in the deep hold of the hospital as in the storage of a ghost ship run aground — the secret in it that will, perhaps, stir again the wind that failed. It will be preserved, kept like larva, like a bullet sealed gleaming in its chamber. They will gather around it, probe and sample, argue — then return it to its between- world, remove their aprons and gloves and stroll, some evenings, a city block for a beer, a glass of chilled white wine. Even there, they will continue to speak of it, what they glean from beneath the narrative of scars, surgical cavities, the wondrous mess it became before I left it to them with what’s left of me, this name, a signature, a neatened suture, perfect, this last, selfish stitch.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. W a i t. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. NOW.

I The whole of human history … The whole of human history seems to be the story of men who kill, and of men who are killed; of murderers who light their cigarettes with trembling hands, and of poor, unlucky kids staring into the eyes of those who bring them their deaths. But history is not about murderers, after all. It is just the story of some poor kids. The whole history of the world is just the story of millions of poor kids overwhelmed by the fear of death, or by the fear of bringing death to others. My mother had closed her eyes and was breathing softly. Every so often, her right hand, abandoned on the white sheet, would shift slightly, opening and closing like the hand of a sleeping baby. The nurse came into the room just then, as I had begun to tell the story of Jaco. She opened the door as slowly as possible, but I felt her presence behind my shoulders bending over the bed, looking at my mother. She is sleeping, said the nurse. Don't wake her. I didn't turn around, but continued my story in a low whisper. When I got to the part about the grenade, I heard the nurse tiptoeing out, closing the door behind her, silently. The grenade exploded a few feet away, while Jaco was helping to carry two wounded soldiers down the hill to the hospital tent. By the time I got to him, he was stretched out on the grass, breathing heavily. Everyone around him had been killed. He watched as I approached, and when I was close, he smiled. He had just been promoted to lieutenant, even though he had not yet turned nineteen. Six months ago, when we were getting ready to leave Italy, Ercolani had taken me aside and said:Look out for Jaco. He's like a brother to me. Make sure nothing bad happens to him. I was irritated:War isn't a game. It doesn't play by the rules. If something bad happens to him, tough luck. But from that day on, I kept my eye on Jacoboni: he was about the same age as me, but seemed much younger. In any event, he turned out to be a good officer: he did his duty like all the others, like a good kid. He took war seriously, convinced he would go home in one piece, back to his family in Monterotondo, near Rome. And it was perhaps because of this that he smiled as I sat down next to him. I saw right away that it was hopeless. The grenade had torn open his abdomen and his intestines were cascading down his leg past his knees and coiling onto the ground. We were surrounded by the dead: hundreds of them in the forest around us. Most were Italian, but there were a few Germans: they had advanced this far before we had finally pushed them back. Their dead lay alongside ours. It began to rain. The rain on the oak leaves made a soft music, like women whispering. Every so often, it would intensify as it darted here, and there through the trees, rising and then fading away. The green reflection of the forest washed everything the color of water, gave an extraordinary lightness to things: to the solid trunks of the trees, to the bodies lying in the grass. Glimpsed through the branches of the trees, the sky appeared light and remote: A sky made of silk, luminous and pure, serene, scrubbed of clouds and fog. The rain was coming from who knows where. Or maybe it was not even rain, just the memory of some rain falling from the depths of past summers, falling from some childhood summer long ago.

IV So it did not come as a surprise—a relief, almost—when we heard the tac-tac-tac of machine guns and the thud of grenades rising up from the woods below. The Germans were advancing again through the tangle of bomb-shattered branches, clearing a path with axe-blows, foreheads crushed beneath the overhang of great steel helmets, gleaming eyes fixed dead ahead. The rest of that day was bitter, and many of us fell forever headlong in the grass. But toward evening the voice of battle began to diminish, and then from the depths of the forest we could hear the song of the wounded: the serene, monotonous, sad-hopeful song of the wounded, joining the chorus of birds hidden in the foliage as they welcomed the return of the moon. It was still daylight, but the moon was rising sweetly from behind the forested mountains of Reims. It was green against a white and tender sky… A moon from the forest of Ardennes, a moon from the country of Rimbaud, of Verlaine, a delicate green moon, round and light, entering the room of the sky from behind a screen of branches as if stepping delicately out of the earth, rising up from the grass, causing the tree-branches to blush transparent and sweet. Like startled birds, we had settled again around Jaco: I can't stand it any more, he smiled. Don't let me suffer. But now his smile was tired: a tired smile in a face clenched like a fist. Jaco's suffering gnawed away at us, sinking into our bones. There is nothing so terrible, or so sweet, so touching, as that animal, man, when he gives over to death. I felt my shirt sticking to my back. My face and the faces of the others were beaded with sweat, like the sweet face of Nazzareno Jacoboni. And little by little I became aware that everyone had slowly turned toward me, pinning me down with their eyes. Along with Jaco's terrible, unbearable suffering, something else was sinking into us, little by little, something which was not ours. Something strong, strange, insistent, was slowly being born within us. Jaco stared at me, even he now stared at me, expecting something, and I felt a new idea forming inside me, and inside the others. I can't go on, said Jaco. I looked away to the green moon hanging behind the trees: It had taken on the round shapeliness of a fragrant leaf: a laurel leaf, perhaps, or sage, or mint, a great green leaf, transparent with evening daylight. The sun had not yet settled into the forest, and his last warm rays struck the trunks of the trees leaving some of them wounded, bleeding. Others—the oaks, the beeches, poplars and birches— reflected the light in a strange way, as if they were made of glass. That glassy light, which the sun, just before it sets, draws from the earth's waters, drinks from its grass, from its leaves, from the trunks of its trees, to slake its thirst. All of them stared at me, but I was not aware of what I was doing. I felt my hands moving, but I did not know what I was doing until I found myself standing and saw them looking up at me, and Jacoboni smiling at me strangely, and felt something cold and smooth in my hands. And finally I was aware that I was standing with a rifle in my hands. I closed my eyes, and fired. I fired with my eyes closed, one shot after another. And then, when the echo of the shots had melted into the woods, there was a great silence. With my eyes still closed, rifle still in hand, I turned and took a few steps. Suddenly I heard:Murderer! Murderer! It was the voice of woman, terrible, the voice of a sister, desperate, the voice of a mother, of a lover. And at that moment nothing could have been more terrible than that voice of a woman, that voice of a mother, of a sister, of a lover, crying: Murderer! I opened my eyes and saw one of the girls running toward me, her hands like claws, as if she intended to tear me apart. She screamed again:Murderer! and then stopped abruptly a few paces away, filthy, disheveled, with a great bewilderment, spreading across her face, a wondrous pity. I stood in front of her, rifle in my hands, tears in my eyes. And they were certainly a marvelous thing, those tears, not only for her, but for me as well. My mother . . . My mother was lying on her back, her eyes were closed, and she seemed to be asleep; Even her hand, abandoned on the sheets, had dozed off. I fell silent, looking at the moon rising inch by inch over the olive trees of Settignano. It gave me great solace, that moon and those trees. That bright silver moon over silvery trees, that moon in the shape of an olive leaf, clean and transparent, shining like a vein of silver, pulsing through green marble in the incensed darkness of a church.

My days among the Dead are past; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal, And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to them I owe, My cheeks have often been bedew'd With tears of thoughtful gratitude. My thoughts are with the Dead, with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find Instruction with an humble mind. My hopes are with the Dead, anon My place with them will be, And I with them shall travel on Through all Futurity; Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust.

when I no longer feel it breathing down my neck it's just around the corner (hi neighbor)

Now that obituaries come online with coroner reports and full disclosure, imagine the ways to betray a man come out of hiding to die. Ask the bloggers who weigh in on my friend’s bad habit, who make of it their own drug strung out across a mirror, so when they pay tribute to their power, how they had their doubts about his talent, his flu, I think how lucky I was to receive the kindness of the weak. My death space, as they call it, as if it’s me who died. A life, we know, is complex. But death is simple. A place to talk shit, to license grief, or barring that, to kill it.

If, when I die, I must be buried, let No cemetery engulph me — no lone grot, Where the great palpitating world comes not, Save when, with heart bowed down and eyelids wet, It pays its last sad melancholy debt To some outjourneying pilgrim. May my lot Be rather to lie in some much-used spot, Where human life, with all its noise and fret, Throbs on about me. Let the roll of wheels, With all earth’s sounds of pleasure, commerce, love, And rush of hurrying feet surge o’er my head. Even in my grave I shall be one who feels Close kinship with the pulsing world above; And too deep silence would distress me, dead.

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares, My feast of joy is but a dish of pain, My crop of corn is but a field of tares, And all my good is but vain hope of gain. The day is gone and yet I saw no sun, And now I live, and now my life is done. The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung, The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green, My youth is gone, and yet I am but young, I saw the world, and yet I was not seen, My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun, And now I live, and now my life is done. I sought my death and found it in my womb, I lookt for life and saw it was a shade, I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb, And now I die, and now I am but made. The glass is full, and now the glass is run, And now I live, and now my life is done.

She fell asleep on Christmas Eve: At length the long-ungranted shade Of weary eyelids overweigh'd The pain nought else might yet relieve. Our mother, who had lean'd all day Over the bed from chime to chime, Then rais'd herself for the first time, And as she sat her down, did pray. Her little work-table was spread With work to finish. For the glare Made by her candle, she had care To work some distance from the bed. Without, there was a cold moon up, Of winter radiance sheer and thin; The hollow halo it was in Was like an icy crystal cup. Through the small room, with subtle sound Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove And redden'd. In its dim alcove The mirror shed a clearness round. I had been sitting up some nights, And my tired mind felt weak and blank; Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank The stillness and the broken lights. Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years Heard in each hour, crept off; and then The ruffled silence spread again, Like water that a pebble stirs. Our mother rose from where she sat: Her needles, as she laid them down, Met lightly, and her silken gown Settled: no other noise than that. "Glory unto the Newly Born!" So, as said angels, she did say; Because we were in Christmas Day, Though it would still be long till morn. Just then in the room over us There was a pushing back of chairs, As some who had sat unawares So late, now heard the hour, and rose. With anxious softly-stepping haste Our mother went where Margaret lay, Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they Have broken her long watch'd-for rest! She stoop'd an instant, calm, and turn'd; But suddenly turn'd back again; And all her features seem'd in pain With woe, and her eyes gaz'd and yearn'd. For my part, I but hid my face, And held my breath, and spoke no word: There was none spoken; but I heard The silence for a little space. Our mother bow'd herself and wept: And both my arms fell, and I said, "God knows I knew that she was dead." And there, all white, my sister slept. Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn A little after twelve o'clock We said, ere the first quarter struck, "Christ's blessing on the newly born!"