341 Grief poems

Not my hands but green across you now. Green tons hold you down, and ten bass curve teasing in your hair. Summer slime will pile deep on your breast. Four months of ice will keep you firm. I hope each spring to find you tangled in those pads pulled not quite loose by the spillway pour, stars in dead reflection off your teeth. Lie there lily still. The spillway’s closed. Two feet down most lakes are common gray. This lake is dark from the black blue Mission range climbing sky like music dying Indians once wailed. On ocean beaches, mystery fish are offered to the moon. Your jaws go blue. Your hands start waving every wind. Wave to the ocean where we crushed a mile of foam. We still love there in thundering foam and love. Whales fall in love with gulls and tide reclaims the Dolly skeletons gone with a blast of aching horns to China. Landlocked in Montana here the end is limited by light, the final note will trail off at the farthest point we see, already faded, lover, where you bloat. All girls should be nicer. Arrows rain above us in the Indian wind. My future should be full of windy gems, my past will stop this roaring in my dreams. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. But the arrows sing: no way to float her up. The dead sink from dead weight. The Mission range turns this water black late afternoons. One boy slapped the other. Hard. The slapped boy talked until his dignity dissolved, screamed a single ‘stop’ and went down sobbing in the company pond. I swam for him all night. My only suit got wet and factory hands went home. No one cared the coward disappeared. Morning then: cold music I had never heard. Loners like work best on second shift. No one liked our product and the factory closed. Off south, the bison multiply so fast a slaughter’s mandatory every spring and every spring the creeks get fat and Kicking Horse fills up. My hope is vague. The far blur of your bones in May may be nourished by the snow. The spillway’s open and you spill out into weather, lover down the bright canal and mother, irrigating crops dead Indians forgot to plant. I’m sailing west with arrows to dissolving foam where waves strand naked Dollys. Their eyes are white as oriental mountains and their tongues are teasing oil from whales.

Your dying was a difficult enterprise. First, petty things took up your energies, The small but clustering duties of the sick, Irritant as the cough’s dry rhetoric. Those hours of waiting for pills, shot, X-ray Or test (while you read novels two a day) Already with a kind of clumsy stealth Distanced you from the habits of your health. In hope still, courteous still, but tired and thin, You tried to stay the man that you had been, Treating each symptom as a mere mishap Without import. But then the spinal tap. It brought a hard headache, and when night came I heard you wake up from the same bad dream Every half-hour with the same short cry Of mild outrage, before immediately Slipping into the nightmare once again Empty of content but the drip of pain. No respite followed: though the nightmare ceased, Your cough grew thick and rich, its strength increased. Four nights, and on the fifth we drove you down To the Emergency Room. That frown, that frown: I’d never seen such rage in you before As when they wheeled you through the swinging door. For you knew, rightly, they conveyed you from Those normal pleasures of the sun’s kingdom The hedonistic body basks within And takes for granted—summer on the skin, Sleep without break, the moderate taste of tea In a dry mouth. You had gone on from me As if your body sought out martyrdom In the far Canada of a hospital room. Once there, you entered fully the distress And long pale rigours of the wilderness. A gust of morphine hid you. Back in sight You breathed through a segmented tube, fat, white, Jammed down your throat so that you could not speak. How thin the distance made you. In your cheek One day, appeared the true shape of your bone No longer padded. Still your mind, alone, Explored this emptying intermediate State for what holds and rests were hidden in it. You wrote us messages on a pad, amused At one time that you had your nurse confused Who, seeing you reconciled after four years With your grey father, both of you in tears, Asked if this was at last your ‘special friend’ (The one you waited for until the end). ‘She sings,’ you wrote, ‘a Philippine folk song To wake me in the morning ... It is long And very pretty.’ Grabbing at detail To furnish this bare ledge toured by the gale, On which you lay, bed restful as a knife, You tried, tried hard, to make of it a life Thick with the complicating circumstance Your thoughts might fasten on. It had been chance Always till now that had filled up the moment With live specifics your hilarious comment Discovered as it went along; and fed, Laconic, quick, wherever it was led. You improvised upon your own delight. I think back to the scented summer night We talked between our sleeping bags, below A molten field of stars five years ago: I was so tickled by your mind’s light touch I couldn’t sleep, you made me laugh too much, Though I was tired and begged you to leave off. Now you were tired, and yet not tired enough —Still hungry for the great world you were losing Steadily in no season of your choosing— And when at last the whole death was assured, Drugs having failed, and when you had endured Two weeks of an abominable constraint, You faced it equably, without complaint, Unwhimpering, but not at peace with it. You’d lived as if your time was infinite: You were not ready and not reconciled, Feeling as uncompleted as a child Till you had shown the world what you could do In some ambitious role to be worked through, A role your need for it had half-defined, But never wholly, even in your mind. You lacked the necessary ruthlessness, The soaring meanness that pinpoints success. We loved that lack of self-love, and your smile, Rueful, at your own silliness. Meanwhile, Your lungs collapsed, and the machine, unstrained, Did all your breathing now. Nothing remained But death by drowning on an inland sea Of your own fluids, which it seemed could be Kindly forestalled by drugs. Both could and would: Nothing was said, everything understood, At least by us. Your own concerns were not Long-term, precisely, when they gave the shot —You made local arrangements to the bed And pulled a pillow round beside your head. And so you slept, and died, your skin gone grey, Achieving your completeness, in a way. Outdoors next day, I was dizzy from a sense Of being ejected with some violence From vigil in a white and distant spot Where I was numb, into this garden plot Too warm, too close, and not enough like pain. I was delivered into time again —The variations that I live among Where your long body too used to belong And where the still bush is minutely active. You never thought your body was attractive, Though others did, and yet you trusted it And must have loved its fickleness a bit Since it was yours and gave you what it could, Till near the end it let you down for good, Its blood hospitable to those guests who Took over by betraying it into The greatest of its inconsistencies This difficult, tedious, painful enterprise.

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, And the dead be forgotten; Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

We wither, unlike stars;    die, unlike hills and cisterns. Anashadowed my protector,    esteemed Arbad, who’s left us. But ana do not grieve;    all sparrows exit the feast hall. Novelties don’t excite me,    nor wyrdstaefaffright me. Men are like encampments    that soon become ruins. They come with their kin,    leave only land behind when they go— the last herdsman    rounding up the stragglers. Man’s a shooting star:    light turned to ash. Wealth and kin a stain    that soon wears away. The work we do    inevitably gehrorene. The wise grasp this;    the foolish fight it and lose. If my wyrd holds off a while,    my fingers reach out for its stick. Ana can tell you stories,    bent over the more ana try to straighten. Ana am like a battered sword    that hasn’t gotten any less sharp. Don’t leave me!    (The sparrow finds the exit suddenly—.) O you reproachful wifcynn:    when the men go off Can your witchcraft tell us    who’ll return? Do you faint    because they flet ofgeāfon? You make everyone weep!    for the burston bodies of the irreplaceable friends    of your own youth. But neither the witches    nor the necromancers know what the aelmihtig intends.    Just ask them: Hwœr cōmthe men?Hwœr cōmour protectors? They don’t even know    when the rain storm will come!

(For Holy Cross Day, 1914) Clouds is under clouds and rain For there will not come again Two, the beloved sire and son Whom all gifts were rained upon. Kindness is all done, alas, Courtesy and grace must pass, Beauty, wit and charm lie dead, Love no more may wreathe the head. Now the branch that waved so high No wind tosses to the sky; There's no flowering time to come, No sweet leafage and no bloom. Percy, golden-hearted boy, In the heyday of his joy Left his new-made bride and chose The steep way that Honour goes. Took for his the deathless song Of the love that knows no wrong: Could I love thee, dear, so true Were not Honour more than you? (Oh, forgive, dear Lovelace, laid In this mean Procrustean bed!) Dear, I love thee best of all When I go, at England's call. In our magnificent sky aglow How shall we this Percy know Where he shines among the suns And the planets and the moons? Percy died for England, why, Here's a sign to know him by! There's one dear and fixèd star, There's a youngling never far. Percy and his father keep The old loved companionship, And shine downward in one ray Where at Clouds they wait for day.

O world! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more—Oh, never more! Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more—Oh, never more!

All at once that stubborn dog of a heart stopped barking at Lady Poetry, jumped over the wall where the sacred crows of Kashmir dwelt and said: I've come into this world to stay. It can't be, protested the daffy nurses of Pickapoon Hospital. It can't be, the guardians of the public order responded in chorus. All at once that heart stopped leaping, not in his beloved Buenos Aires where he'd mis- placed his violin for good or in Ukraine where José sawed timber and memorized train schedules. That stubborn dog of a heart kept singing in the face of turbulence, never knowing whether the Lady would arrive. He put bars on his verses because of issues with his lungs and thanked the little birds that ate from his hand. He fed the crows as well—"breadcrumbing," he'd call it—ringing a bell while quoting mystics in their native tongues. This is why I've come, he'd say, but all at once that stubborn dog of a heart stopped speaking and drew a giant moustache high up in the spheres. You can see it if you dare listen to their music.

Except a six-year pony penned from birth inside a barn, I never seen anything worse. Eleven dobermans and mixed breeds, some still pups, removed from a residence after anonymous tips about a dead dog decomposing on the porch. Still and yet, this many dogs almost beats that one horse. The problem of human freedom one might couch in other terms than Kant’s.It’s nasty in there. Dog shit everywhere. I don’t see how she could breathe. The woman, nearly ninety, wept and pleaded with the workers.I’ve been raising dogs right here in this very house since before your mothers were born. If I’m treating these dogs as bad as you say, how come you need those chokers to drag them away? The Humane Society truck’s radio, left on, played “Me and Bobby McGee.”They were strays, unwanted. I fed them and gave them a home. Now you’ll kill them and call me cruel. And who will protect me? How will I sleep? When asked, the welfare worker said the woman cannot be forced from her home. But freedom of will is not freedom from necessity and obligation. The neighbors lost interest soon and left her lawn. Meanwhile a breeze blows in from the Gulf on a girl showing her friends the spot where she lost her left foot to a shark.He kept twisting it like a dog with a rag, she says just to hear them squeal. Really, he only managed to take a chunk and maul the rest, but the doctors had to amputate. She had to learn to trust loss. And in Houston a boy tries to jimmy a padlock with a broom to free his six-year-old sister from the storage shed their parents told them was “the naughty room.” She was causing trouble at school, wetting her bed, and threatening to run away. We made a decision. We thought a few hours here was best for her. Police said the girl had been left water. A person may purchase the wind and the sun at the price of perpetual peregrination.

I that in heill wes and gladnes, Am trublit now with gret seiknes, And feblit with infermite; Timor mortis conturbat me. Our plesance heir is all vane glory, This fals warld is bot transitory, The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle; Timor mortis conturbat me. The stait of man dois change and vary, Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary, Now dansand mery, now like to dee; Timor mortis conturbat me. No stait in erd heir standis sickir; As with the wynd wavis the wickir, Wavis this warldis vanite. Timor mortis conturbat me. On to the ded gois all estatis, Princis, prelotis, and potestatis, Baith riche and pur of al degre; Timor mortis conturbat me. He takis the knychtis in to feild, Anarmit under helme and scheild; Victour he is at all mellie; Timor mortis conturbat me. That strang unmercifull tyrand Takis, on the moderis breist sowkand, The bab full of benignite; Timor mortis conturbat me. He takis the campion in the stour, The capitane closit in the tour, The lady in bour full of bewte; Timor mortis conturbat me. He sparis no lord for his piscence, Na clerk for his intelligence; His awfull strak may no man fle; Timor mortis conturbat me. Art-magicianis, and astrologgis, Rethoris, logicianis, and theologgis, Thame helpis no conclusionis sle; Timor mortis conturbat me. In medicyne the most practicianis, Lechis, surrigianis, and phisicianis, Thame self fra ded may not supple; Timor mortis conturbat me. I se that makaris amang the laif Playis heir ther pageant, syne gois to graif; Sparit is nocht ther faculte; Timor mortis conturbat me. He hes done petuously devour, The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour, The Monk of Bery, and Gower, all thre; Timor mortis conturbat me. The gude Syr Hew of Eglintoun, And eik Heryot, and Wyntoun, He hes tane out of this cuntre; Timor mortis conturbat me. That scorpion fell hes done infek Maister Johne Clerk, and Jame Afflek, Fra balat making and tragidie; Timor mortis conturbat me. Holland and Barbour he hes berevit; Allace! that he nocht with us levit Schir Mungo Lokert of the Le; Timor mortis conturbat me. Clerk of Tranent eik he has tane, That maid the Anteris of Gawane; Schir Gilbert Hay endit hes he; Timor mortis conturbat me. He hes Blind Hary and Sandy Traill Slaine with his schour of mortall haill, Quhilk Patrik Johnestoun myght nocht fle; Timor mortis conturbat me. He hes reft Merseir his endite, That did in luf so lifly write, So schort, so quyk, of sentence hie; Timor mortis conturbat me. He hes tane Roull of Aberdene, And gentill Roull of Corstorphin; Two bettir fallowis did no man se; Timor mortis conturbat me. In Dumfermelyne he hes done roune With Maister Robert Henrisoun; Schir Johne the Ros enbrast hes he; Timor mortis conturbat me. And he hes now tane, last of aw, Gud gentill Stobo and Quintyne Schaw, Of quham all wichtis hes pete: Timor mortis conturbat me. Gud Maister Walter Kennedy In poynt of dede lyis veraly, Gret reuth it wer that so suld be; Timor mortis conturbat me. Sen he hes all my brether tane, He will nocht lat me lif alane, On forse I man his nyxt pray be; Timor mortis conturbat me. Sen for the deid remeid is none, Best is that we for dede dispone, Eftir our deid that lif may we; Timor mortis conturbat me.

For Chris Okigbo, the well-known poet, killed in 1967 in the Nigerian civil war. That night he came home, he came unto me at the cold hour of the night Smelling of corn wine in the dawn dew. He stretched his hand and covered my forehead. There was a moon beam sparking rays in particles. The drummer boys had got themselves a goat. The din was high in the wail of the harvest moon. The flood was up gurgling through the fields Birth waters swimming in floods of new blood. He whispered my name in far echo Sky-wailing into a million sounds across my shores. His voice still bore the sadness of the wanderer To wail and die in a soft lonely echo That echo I heard long ago In the fall of night over my river, In the distant rustle of reeds At growth in the strength of my river. Once upon an evening I heard it Strung clear as the gong of the drummer boys Bright burnished like the glint edge of the paschal knife, ready anxious to cut My cords and enter into my fields. I was still a dream then Carried by the flimsy whiffs Of sweet scents borne aloft on the vision Of my coming flood That will bear me slowly and gently Into his world of smiles and smells. He was not very gentle with me But I did not complain. The thrust was hard and angry, severing the tiny cord Shattering the closed gates of raffia Gathering at its eye the reeds to feed my fishes. My flood had not risen. The canoe carried on the strength Of his man rowed steep down my river into a tumultuous eternity Of green hills and mountains That reeled and rolled to the river shore To clasp and bear me away. Then the floodgates opened for justice to cleanse to purify My evening of awakening In the turbulence of his triumph Into the bright evening of my rebirth. The birth was tedious The pangs were bitter Into the bright evening I rushed Crying I have found him I have found him. He stood there rustling in the wind The desire to go was written large upon his forehead. I was not ready for his coming I was not ready for his loneliness, for his sad solitude against the rustling wind. I was not ready for his entrance Into my fields and shores of my river. The entrance of raffia was closed closed against his lonely solitude. He stood beneath my entrance In his approach I knew the steps he took Like the departing Lazarus Marching toward his grave. I was not ready. The flood was gurgling at his estuary swimming within me birth waters warmed by his coming. He was silent mute against the rushing of the wind to cry and die for his homeland. My flood had not risen then. Across my vastness he marched into the wind his arms folded upon his chest, his eyes searching for the gates that will open his amulets to snatch and wear his talisman of hope. He marched into the wind howling through door posts to catch the boatman at the dawn point. to ferry him across my river. But I was not ready. My hands stretched to cover his in the darkness, to cover his eyes in the agony of his solitude to call him names I knew to put the dressing from my womb upon his cudgel scars, to hold his hand in the clasp of nightfall. He was mute; the wind had stopped rustling He was erect like the totem pole of his household He burned and blazed for an ending Then I was ready. As he pierced my agony with his cry, my river burst into flood. My shores reeled and rolled to the world's end, where they say at the world's end the graves are green.