437 Death poems

Shook the box like a maraca. Stood around like a dope in my punch-colored dress, clutching your box to my chest. Opened your plastic receptacle, the size of a jack-in-the-box. But instead of gaudy stripes, your box is sober-suit blue, hymnal blue. Tasted them. You've gained a statue's flavor, like licking the pyramids, or kissing sandstone shoulders. I mean boulders. Remarked to your box: "REINCARNATION comes from roots meaning 'to be made flesh again.'" Stowed your box under my bed for a week to seed dreams in which you advise me. (This didn't work.) Opened the Babylonian Talmud at random. Read aloud to your gritty, gray-white powder: "There are three keys which the Holy One, blessed be He, has not entrusted into the hands of any messenger. These are: the key of rain, the key of birth, and the key of the resurrection of the dead." Worked myself up to watery eyes. Any intensity evaporated the instant I stopped reading. Tried to intuit your format, sift it from tides of void. Does shape play a role? My watch ticked in an exaggerated way. Closed my eyes, sent forth mental tendrils seeking the nothing of you. They curled back on them- selves, weaving around the wing chair, a dog's leg, a lamp stand, eventu- ally heading back toward the nothing of me.

Jan came this morning —I dreamt of my father he says he was riding in an oak coffin I walked next to the hearse and father turned to me: you dressed me nicely and the funeral is very beautiful at this time of year so many flowers it must have cost a lot don’t worry about it father —I say—let people see we loved you that we spared nothing six men in black livery walk nicely at our sides father thought for a while and said—the key to the desk is in the silver inkwell there is still some money in the second drawer on the left with this money—I say— we will buy you a gravestone a large one of black marble it isn’t necessary—says father— better give it to the poor six men in black livery walk nicely at our sides they carry burning lanterns again he seemed to be thinking —take care of the flowers in the garden cover them for the winter I don’t want them to be wasted you are the oldest—he says— from a little felt bag behind the painting take out the cuff links with real pearls let them bring you luck my mother gave them to me when I finished high school then he didn’t say anything he must have entered a deeper sleep this is how our dead look after us they warn us through dreams bring back lost money hunt for jobs whisper the numbers of lottery tickets or when they can’t do this knock with their fingers on the windows and out of gratitude we imagine immortality for them snug as the burrow of a mouse

Air here is like the water Of an aquarium that’s been lived in for a while—clear and still Beyond the rigors Of glass; appearing cold (and clear) as spring streams Fed by snow and ice, But unexpectedly warm to feel, and inviting; side-lit— A vitality of shadows Once you come into it, and long bars of light Burning like spots, Remarkable for the absence of dust in their sharp crossfires; Heavy, as crystal Is heavy, as if to move here would mean pushing against a force Palpable, and strong; Yet rich with prospects of life, comfortable With the idea of life, As if, put on its slide, every drop is stocked with wonders, Swarming, about to burst— Beautiful in a way, One element sustaining another, our message brought home So that the living Might come to see. Harder to say that without them We are nothing— Water without air; or to speak of our isolation, Or our special loneliness; Or say as they look right through us, at their plants, Pictures, books, Windows, reflections, and blank white walls, That we need them, To orient ourselves and to tell us who we are; Or that with each look They are swimming to within our sights; or that we are always casting Wider and wider And that even now they are fighting to avoid our nets.

Your dust will be upon the wind Within some certain years, Though you be sealed in lead to-day Amid the country’s tears. When this idyllic churchyard Becomes the heart of town, The place to build garage or inn, They’ll throw your tombstone down. Your name so dim, so long outworn, Your bones so near to earth, Your sturdy kindred dead and gone, How should men know your worth? So read upon the runic moon Man’s epitaph, deep-writ. It says the world is one great grave. For names it cares no whit. It tells the folk to live in peace, And still, in peace, to die. At least, so speaks the moon to me, The tombstone of the sky.

At the table, at the grave not knowing whether to grieve or celebrate, they seemed to find a way within the stalled noon clatter and the dusk over oily swamps and elder tangle along a locked stockade of heavy machines, as the blue heron, looking down, flew farther on. Nothing dissolved for them the mortal green and black in transparent power of spacious streams now gone from earth. The flickering they found, terror-hope-terror, in fire of sunset clouds remained unwavering in its progress to night and day and night. And yet the pleasure they took in everything did not wear out. The limestone quarry of a poorer century, lipped in birds and berries, treasured up, still treasures up, old rains beneath its surface of dusty jet— still waits behind their houses on airless nights to be the dreams and drownings of new children.

1. Josef Mengele Drowns While Swimming at a Beach in Brazil, 1979 His name then: Wolfgang Gerhard. How easy, slipping on another man’s skin. Another country, too, its sun’s heat and light as insistent as a pair of forceps. His pants, left crumpled on the beach, forged papers and a few hard candies in the pocket. Where the water was shallow, he could look down and see his shadow passing over the pale sand, a wobbly twin, matching him stroke for stroke for stroke. 2. Li Po Drowns Trying to Embrace the Reflection of the Moon in the Yangtze, 762 The moon is no drinker of wine, so I must compensate. Surely you’ve heard the crows and nightingales egging me on? The day has dispersed from the courtyards like a gang of sparrows, and nothing is left of the world that is not pecked-over, hard and dark as the dream of an apple seed. The young men laugh at an old man drinking alone, but here are my companions: my shadow, as loyal and thin as a starved dog, and the moon, his whole face wrinkling with laughter. 3. Bob, the Circus Seal, Drowns Himself in His Tank in Galveston, 1911 By then his teeth had rotted out, and he often turned to his owner with his mouth open as if about to speak, a ruined smell jetting from inside. He had already attempted it, three days before, but his owner dove in and pulled him up onto the slimy planks. His circus show days were long gone. Sure, some afternoons a kid might walk by and see the scabby painting on the side of the building: the hoop, the pedestal, the ghost of a man in a top hat, the striped ball now like a clot of pus streaked with blood, hovering over the sleek, dark head. 4. Natalie Wood Drowns under Mysterious Circumstances near Santa Catalina Island, 1981 Let me tell you: death is a long silk glove dropped to the floor. It doesn’t remember the heft of the arm, the fingers dancing. That limb is gone, and nothing will hold its shape again. You twirl your pastel skirt. You watch two cars race toward the cliff, and there is nothing you can do. So many lives you’ve entered like a room: swooned, held the prop pistol to your own face, sang for the back row. But was it your voice? What was that name you were born into? Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko? What happened to her? Was she the one taken, her family butchered, living another life among the enemy people? Was it the morning? when she stopped scanning the horizon for rescuers that she turned into you? 5. Hippasus of Metapontum Is Drowned at Sea for the Heresy of Discovering Irrational Numbers, ca. 500 BCE His fellow Pythagoreans had already built a shrine to his memory and placed it where he passed by every day, but he did not take the hint. It was on the ship that they seized him. God was an integer, firm as an unripe apricot. But weren’t there streets in the city that wound forever into the minute darkness? Weren’t there dreams where he met himself again and again, without ever seeming to wake? The sea is incommensurable. Each lungful of air kept dividing itself, even as the boat became a decimal point on the far horizon. 6. Bennie Wint, 20 Years after Faking His Drowning Death, is Discovered Alive, 2009 In the first years after I disappeared, I read every report of drowning: children, mostly boys, mostly in their bathtubs, mostly accidents. Old men whose lungs filled with fluid while they sat in their armchairs. Fishermen. Swimmers. Immigrants crowded onto rafts. Some men, their throats seize up, and they die without ever swallowing a drop, as if they never left the shore. Some nights I dreamed what never happened: I held my drowning in my palm like a giant pearl. Some days, standing behind the cash register of my new life, I felt my lungs flatten out like a pair of discarded socks. Did I ever think of the woman I left on the shore as I kicked out past the last of the breakers? I won’t say. Here it was: I might have drowned trying to pretend to. I had to swim so far out, then mark a different beach and swim back a different man, without knowing if his strength was enough to carry me to shore.

Who will stay behind, and what? A wind. Blindness from the blind man disappearing. A token of the sea: a strand of foam. A cloud stuck in a tree. Who will stay behind, and what? A single sound as genesis regrasses its creation. Like the violin rose that honors just itself. Seven grasses of that grass do understand. More than all the stars hence and northward, that star will stay that sinks into a tear. Forever in its jug, a drop of  wine remains. What will be left here? God. Not enough for you? Translated from the Yiddish

When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; I shall not hear the nightingale Sing on, as if in pain: And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget.

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

1 When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love. 2 O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. 3 In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break. 4 In the swamp in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. Solitary the thrush, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song. Song of the bleeding throat, Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.) 5 Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin. 6 Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac. 7 (Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death. All over bouquets of roses, O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death.) 8 O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night, As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,) As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,) As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe, As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night, As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night, As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb, Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. 9 Sing on there in the swamp, O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me, The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 10 O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love? Sea-winds blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting, These and with these and the breath of my chant, I’ll perfume the grave of him I love. 11 O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love? Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air, With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific, In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there, With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows, And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning. 12 Lo, body and soul—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn. Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 13 Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. O liquid and free and tender! O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer! You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. 14 Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,) Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail, And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death. Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me, The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love. From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird. And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death. Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. Approach strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death. From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death. 15 To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night. While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions. And I saw askant the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) And the staffs all splinter’d and broken. I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not, The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d. 16 Passing the visions, passing the night, Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring. I cease from my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night. Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.