153 Sorrow and grieving poems

1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1; bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow— O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk-upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack? O, fellow with a will who won't take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails— Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life, but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless, the radio broke, And twelve o'clock arrived just once too often, just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath, just one too many, And wow he died as wow he lived, going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired, zowie did he live and zowie did he die, With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not, Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T., Wham, Mr. Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain; Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.

Why were you born when the snow was falling? You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling, Or when grapes are green in the cluster, Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster For their far off flying From summer dying. Why did you die when the lambs were cropping? You should have died at the apples’ dropping, When the grasshopper comes to trouble, And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, And all winds go sighing For sweet things dying.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

A faint smell of urine embroidering that bouquet of mold the big cushions give off days the fog won’t lift, and a shelf of bone growing out over the eyelids like evening’s shadow across a field of corn— The whole parade leaking out from your shoulders, bequeathing to the groin a pang of distance; then that metallic taste in the mouth and a voice you had let yourself believe was dead close now by your ear, intimate and sweet: Well, well, well, look what we have here.

Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels. — Seferis , Mythistorema (for J. G. Farrell) Even now there are places where a thought might grow — Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned To a slow clock of condensation, An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft, Indian compounds where the wind dances And a door bangs with diminished confidence, Lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels, Dog corners for bone burials; And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford, Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel, Among the bathtubs and the washbasins A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole. This is the one star in their firmament Or frames a star within a star. What should they do there but desire? So many days beyond the rhododendrons With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud, They have learnt patience and silence Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood. They have been waiting for us in a foetor Of vegetable sweat since civil war days, Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure Of the expropriated mycologist. He never came back, and light since then Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain. Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something — A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane. There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking Into the earth that nourished it; And nightmares, born of these and the grim Dominion of stale air and rank moisture. Those nearest the door grow strong — ‘Elbow room! Elbow room!’ The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling Utensils and broken pitchers, groaning For their deliverance, have been so long Expectant that there is left only the posture. A half century, without visitors, in the dark — Poor preparation for the cracking lock And creak of hinges; magi, moonmen, Powdery prisoners of the old regime, Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms. Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms, They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith. They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! ‘Save us, save us,’ they seem to say, ‘Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!’

There was a ship went into the sea over the body of my brother I am just a boy he was not much older than me the goddess is good and cruel wants her share of life, like us sparkling dust of birds far away whom we follow, the stars the blood red dust of life as my brother’s face disappeared beneath us beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess to where we do not know leaving the war of my grandfather the smell of smoke following us our keel, my brother, knocking down the doors of the sea the tall, and the wild waves coming, crashing under the keel of my brother’s name far from the sound of places we were leaving the roads we followed marching past my uncle’s crooked mountain forts while his men called out at us with our long hair on our shoulders first by my brother’s name who was this girl with him, leave her with us she is my brother, he said not glancing at me our songs we sang in the warm rain for the goddess blessed be her name her cloak the wild wood pigeons turning her crown the lone plover’s crying where now are you brother?

Whatever city or country road you two are on there are nettles, and the dark invisible elements cling to your skin though you do not cry and you do not scratch your arms at forty-five degree angles as the landing point of a swan in the Ohio, the Detroit River; at the Paradise Theatre you named the cellist with the fanatical fingers of the plumber, the exorcist, and though the gimmicky at wrist and kneecaps could lift the seance table, your voice was real in the gait and laughter of Uncle Henry, who could dance on either leg, wooden or real, to the sound of the troop train, megaphone, catching the fine pitch of a singer on the athletic fields of Virginia. At the Radisson Hotel, we once took a fine angel of the law to the convention center, and put her down as an egret in the subzero platform of a friend— this is Minneapolis, the movies are all of strangers, holding themselves in the delicacy of treading water, while they wait for the trumpet of the 20th Century Limited over the bluff or cranny. You two men like to confront. the craters of history and spillage, our natural infections of you innoculating blankets and fur, ethos of cadaver and sunflower. I hold the dogwood blossom, eat the pear, and watch the nettle swim up in the pools of the completed song of Leadbelly and Little Crow crooning the buffalo and horse to the changes and the bridge of a twelve-string guitar, the melody of “Irene”; this is really goodbye— I can see the precious stones of embolism and consumption on the platinum wires of the mouth: in the flowing rivers, in the public baths of Ohio and Michigan.

for Edmund White Lunch: as we close the twentieth century, death, like a hanger-on or a wanna-be sits with us at the cluttered bistro table, inflecting the conversation. Elderly friends take lovers, rent studios, plan trips to unpronounceable provinces. Fifty makes the ironic wager that his biographer will outlive him— as may the erudite eighty-one-year-old dandy with whom a squabble is simmering. His green-eyed architect companion died in the spring. He is frank about his grief, as he savors spiced pumpkin soup, and a sliced rare filet. We’ll see the next decade in or not. This one retains its flavor. “Her new book ...” “... brilliant!” “She slept with ...” “Really!” Long arabesques of silver-tipped sentences drift on the current of our two languages into the mist of late September midafternoon, where the dusk is curling Just thirty-eight: her last chemotherapy treatment’s the same day classes begin again. I went through it a year before she started; but hers was both breasts, and lymph nodes. She’s always been a lax vegetarian. Now she has cut out butter and cheese, and she never drank wine or beer. What else is there to eliminate? Tea and coffee ... ? (Our avocado salads are copious.) It’s easier to talk about politics than to allow the terror that shares both of our bedrooms to find words. It made the introduction; it’s an acquaintance we’ve in common. Trading medical anecdotes helps out when conversation lapses. We don’t discuss Mitterrand and cancer. Four months (I say) I’ll see her, see him again. (I dream my life; I wake to contingencies.) Now I walk home along the river, into the wind, as the clouds break open.

The mountain thinks it’s the same without you but it’s wrong. Maybe the same stars whisking themselves further off, the darker the brighter, same chamomile crushed underfoot but the little, wiry dog we loved has preceded us into paradise, not that I expect to join her even though my own crappy heart’s worse, running’s out but I may be finally learning how to sit in a chair. I still don’t know what to call the good morning bird although whatever word’d be no truer than manzanita. I think namelessness has a crush on me, on how clean I keep my room, the usual stunned ruckus of wake up. But it’s a different moon, different woman on the hotel balcony yet the same kinda scary, vacant stare, caryatid foreseeing what? Before turning back to the customary, immaculate vacation squalor inside. The cash machine still says “enter to exit” but there’s more water in the creek than I’ve ever seen, the brighter the darker, in that first dream there was none.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations 1 This is only a note This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” To say This is only a note / To say Echoes the title of William Carlos Williams’s poem, “ This Is Just To Say ” how sorry I am You died You died Bryan Wynter was a friend of Graham’s, and landscape painter (1915-1975). The poem takes both the form of an elegy and a direct address to the deceased Wynter, in the form of a letter (that is, an epistolary poem). . You will realize What a position it puts Me in. I couldn’t really Have died for you if so I were inclined. The carn carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. Foxglove carn /Foxglove “The Carn” was the name of Wynter’s cottage in the town of Zennor. Carn is an alternate spelling of cairn, a heap of stones used as a landmark or tombstone. A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. here on the wall Outside your first house Leans with me standing In the Zennor wind Zennor wind A village in Cornwall, on the southwestern coast England, prone to strong winds . Anyhow how are things? Are you still somewhere With your long legs long legs In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he terms Wynter “Sir Longlegged” (line 3). And twitching smile under twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. Your blue hat twitching smile under / Your blue hat Critic Fiona Green notes that these lines “resurrect the closing frame of “Lycidas”: “At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue” (line 192). Milton’s “ Lycidas ” is one of the most famous elegies in the English language. walking Across a place? Or am I greedy to make you up Again out of memory? Are you there at all? I would like to think You were all right And not worried about Monica Monica Bryan Wynter’s second wife (née Harman), whom he married in 1959 and the children And not unhappy or bored. 2 Speaking to you and not Knowing if you are there Is not too difficult. My words are used to that. Do you want anything? Where shall I send something? Rice-wine, meanders meanders A type of artwork. One of Wynter’s works at the Tate Gallery in London is titled “Meander I”. In Graham’s poem “Wynter and the Grammarsow,” he calls Wynter “Scholar King / Of rare meanders” (lines 18-19). , paintings By your contemporaries? Or shall I send a kind Of news of no time Leaning against the wall Outside your old house. The house and the whole moor moor In addition to the definition of uncultivated land, a possible play on the verb, meaning to anchor Is flying in the mist. 3 I am up. I’ve washed The front of my face And here I stand looking Out over the top Half of my bedroom window. There almost as far As I can see I see St Buryan’s church tower. St Buryan’s church tower St. Buryan’s is a village in Cornwall. Noted by Sarah Ann Matson as “a greater height than any other church in Cornwall” (St. George and the Dragon[1893]). An inch to the left, behind That dark rise of woods, Is where you used to lurk. 4 This is only a note To say I am aware You are not here. I find It difficult to go Beside Housman’s star Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). Lit fences Housman’s star / Lit fences In A.E. Housman’s poem “ A Shropshire Lad 52 ” the last stanza reads: “There, by the starlit fences, / The wanderer halts and hears / My soul that lingers sighing / About the glimmering weirs.” Also, Graham wrote similar lines in an earlier poem, “Wynter and the Grammarsow”: “Walker beside the star / Lit fences of Housman (lines 25-26). without you. And nobody will laugh At my jokes like you. 5 Bryan, I would be obliged If you would scout things out For me. Although I am not Just ready to start out. I am trying to be better I am trying to be better, Matthew Francis annotates this line in New Collected Poems(2004): “ ‘Try to be better’, or ‘TTTB’, was a motto of Graham’s” , Which will make you smile Under your blue hat. I know I make a symbol Of the foxglove Foxglove A foxglove is a colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. on the wall. It is because it knows you.