There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this.
Sign
MARGE PIERCY
The first white hair coils in my hand,
more wire than down.
Out of the bathroom mirror it glittered at me.
I plucked it, feeling thirty creep in my joints,
and found it silver. It does not melt.
My twentieth birthday lean as glass
spring vacation I stayed in the college town
twanging misery’s electric banjo offkey.
I wanted to inject love right into the veins
of my thigh and wake up visible:
to vibrate color
like the minerals in stones under black light.
My best friend went home without loaning me money.
Hunger was all of the time the taste of my mouth.
Now I am ripened and sag a little from my spine.
More than most I have been the same ragged self
in all colors of luck dripping and dry,
yet love has nested in me and gradually eaten
those sense organs I used to feel with.
I have eaten my hunger soft and my ghost grows stronger.
Gradually, I am turning to chalk,
to humus, to pages and pages of paper,
to fine silver wire like something a violin
could be strung with, or somebody garroted,
or current run through: silver truly,
this hair, shiny and purposeful as forceps
if I knew how to use it.
The Greatest Love
ANNA SWIR
She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.
She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
“You have hair like pearls.”
Her children say:
“Old fool.”
Time
MARY URSULA BETHELL
“Established” is a good word, much used in garden books,
“The plant, when established” . . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive—
Those that come after me will gather these roses,
And watch, as I do now, the white wistaria
Burst, in the sunshine, from its pale green sheath.
Planned. Planted. Established. Then neglected,
Till at last the loiterer by the gate will wonder
At the old, old cottage, the old wooden cottage,
And say, “One might build here, the view is glorious;
This must have been a pretty garden once.”
Going Blind
RAINER MARIA RILKE
She sat at tea just like the others. First
I merely had a notion that this guest
Held up her cup not quite like all the rest.
And once she gave a smile. It almost hurt.
When they arose at last, with talk and laughter,
And ambled slowly and as chance dictated
Through many rooms, their voices animated,
I saw her seek the noise and follow after,
Held in like one who in a little bit
Would have to sing where many people listened;
Her lighted eyes, which spoke of gladness, glistened
With outward luster, as a pond is lit.
She followed slowly, and it took much trying,
As though some obstacle still barred her stride;
And yet as if she on the farther side
Might not be walking any more, but flying.
Old Woman
ELIZABETH JENNINGS
So much she caused she cannot now account for
As she stands watching day return, the cool
Walls of the house moving towards the sun.
She puts some flowers in a vase and thinks
“There is not much I can arrange
In here and now, but flowers are suppliant
As children never were. And love is now
A flicker of memory, my body is
My own entirely. When I lie at night
I gather nothing now into my arms,
No child or man, and where I live
Is what remains when men and children go.”
Yet she owns more than residue of lives
That she has marked and altered. See how she
Warns time from too much touching her possessions
By keeping flowers fed, by polishing
Her fine old silver. Gratefully
She sees her own glance printed on grandchildren.
Drawing the curtains back and opening windows
Every morning now, she feels her years
Grow less and less. Time puts no burden on
Her now she does not need to measure it.
It is acceptance she arranges
And her own life she places in the vase.
Let It Be Forgotten
SARA TEASDALE
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long-forgotten snow.
Courage
ANNE SEXTON
It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
DEATH AND GRIEF
POETRY HAS BEEN CALLED “the language of the human heart,” and we turn to it when our hearts are breaking. The shock of loss and the pain of grief are physical as well as emotional, and sometimes hard to put into words. Poetry reminds us that these feelings are not unique to us, and by sh
aring them we can be comforted by our common humanity. Poets face life’s most difficult questions head-on and unafraid, and through their work, we find solace and wisdom.
In my family, we have faced a good deal of loss. Each death is different. I know that the times when we have been able to gather at our mothers’ bedsides, and hold each other’s hands as they pass from life, are a gift we will always treasure. We feel the presence of God. But when we lose someone before their time, it takes the rest of our lives to understand, or to accept that we never will. We can stay connected to their spirit by doing things they enjoyed, caring for those they loved, sharing memories with their friends, and living and working for the things they believed in.
The poems here include matter-of-fact observations about death. The importance of the countless small rituals that accompany death is captured by Emily Dickinson in her famous poem “The Bustle in a House.”
Other poems explore the agony of loss and despair. In “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” William Carlos Williams describes a woman who aches with the desire to surrender life. However, there are more hopeful poems too, like Christina Rossetti’s “Remember,” which urges us not to be held back by the past, but to move forward with our lives.
As I have moved through the stages of grief in my own life, a healing process occurs. There have been periods during which I have wanted to withdraw from the world. Knowing that my mother turned to poetry at difficult times in her life, and reading the same poems that brought her solace, helped me feel her presence and gave me strength. Later, when I was ready to reengage more fully in the world, poetry helped me remember happy times more often than sad times, feel the guiding spirit of those I have lost, and rely on their memory for a sense of direction and purpose.
The Bustle in a House
EMILY DICKINSON
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth—
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.
Never More Will the Wind
H. D.
from Hymen
Never more will the wind
Cherish you again,
Never more will the rain.
Never more
Shall we find you bright
In the snow and wind.
The snow is melted,
The snow is gone,
And you are flown:
Like a bird out of our hand,
Like a light out of our heart,
You are gone.
Grief
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the mid-night air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for the Dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet.
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
Companion
JO McDOUGALL
When Grief came to visit,
she hung her skirts and jackets in my closet.
She claimed the only bath.
When I protested,
she assured me it would be
only for a little while.
Then she fell in love with the house,
repapered the rooms,
laid green carpet in the den.
She’s a good listener
and plays a mean game of Bridge.
But it’s been seven years.
Once, I ordered her outright to leave.
Days later
she came back, weeping.
I’d enjoyed my mornings,
coffee for one;
my solitary sunsets,
I asked her in.
Remember
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
From To W. P.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
With you a part of me hath passed away;
For in the peopled forest of my mind
A tree made leafless by this wintry wind
Shall never don again its green array.
Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,
Have something of their friendliness resigned;
Another, if I would, I could not find,
And I am grown much older in a day.
But yet I treasure in my memory
Your gift of charity, and young heart’s ease,
And the dear honor of your amity;
For these once mine, my life is rich with these.
And I scarce know which part may greater be—
What I keep of you, or you rob from me.
. . .
To Death
OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY
But for your Terror
Where would be Valour?
What is Love for
But to stand in your way?
Taker and Giver,
For all your endeavour
You leave us with more
Than you touch with decay!
That it is a road
ARIWARA NO NARIHARA
That it is a road
Which some day we all travel
I had heard before,
Yet I never expected
To take it so soon myself.
From In Memoriam A. H. H.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
XXVII
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a consci
ence never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Reconciliation
WALT WHITMAN
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly
softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I
draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
FRIENDSHIP
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, all I wanted to do was be with my friends, be like my friends, and dress the same way as my friends did. We all had the same hairstyle and hair color, and mostly we still do. Growing up in a large extended family also gave me a built-in set of people who still know almost everything about me, and taught me how to be a good friend. If we are lucky, we have close friends who have been part of our lives since childhood or college, and others we have connected with through work or through our children. We share relationship dramas, issues at work, health and mothering questions. Now that my children are mostly grown, friends are the ones I turn to for laughter and comfort. One of my favorite lines is in the poem “Girlfriends” by Ellen Doré Watson, who writes of long-term friendships, “The lifers/who, even seven states away, are the porches/where we land.”