Poem about death

[pauliwauli2]

Does anyone know a really powerful poem about death?

[Clanad]

Here, in the U.S., Mary Oliver has contributed a significant body of excellent prose and poetry for many years. Oliver resides in the New England states and her writings evoke the granite like grittiness of that area. Here's an offering on your subject:
When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

this a fairly recent writing by Oliver... 2003 perhaps...

[MsEVP]

Wow, Pauli, you`ve got your work cut out there. I`d find it very difficult if I had to choose one from those 3. Well done Clan and Pickle.

[lickmyballs]

Happiest thread of the year alert!

[mrs.chappie]

Love that last one, Mr. Pickle.

[MsEVP]

Then there`s my favourite author Walt Whitman, a mystical and metaphysical writer.

At the end of his Leaves of Grass as he says farewell to the world:

I depart as air.... I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies and drift it in lacy jags

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless
And filter and fibre your blood

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged
Missing me one place search another
I stop some where waiting for you.

[starmack]

Hi - gonna offer you a famed extract from my favourite Mary Oliver poem - "In Blackwater Woods," notably quoted by 32-year old UK journalist Ruth Picardie in her published emails before her death in 1997. (Book: 'Before I Say Goodbye').

� ...You must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.�

[starmack]

Hi, In A Pickle,

Yeah, a great poem. It's in Mary Oliver 1983 book "American Primitive." and also in her Selected/Collected Poems.

First saw the poem quoted by American writer Christine Longaker in her book "Facing Death and Finding Hope;" a recommended book on its subject matter.

I should possibly have said that the line which immediately precedes the quotation above states: "....To live in this world...."

[Alipeeps]

I've always liked Funeral Blues by W H Auden (you may recognise it from the film 4 Weddings and a Funeral):

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

-- W.H. Auden

[pauliwauli2]

wow amazing answers! thanks!

[Count_Emmup]

The Life That I Have


The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours

The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

Leo Marks