by Neil Astley
Who yet will not accept
Responsibilities of light.
The good incline to praise,
To have the knack of seeing that
The best is not destroyed
Although forever threatened.
The good go naked in all weathers,
And by their nakedness rebuke
The small protective sanities
That hide men from themselves.
The good are difficult to see
Though open, rare, destructible;
Always, they retain a kind of youth,
The vulnerable grace
Of any bird in flight,
Content to be itself,
Accomplished master and potential victim,
Accepting what the earth or sky intends.
I think that I know one or two
Among my friends.
BRENDAN KENNELLY (b. 1936)
When a Friend
When a friend dies, part
of oneself splits off
and spins into the outer dark.
No use calling it back.
No use saying I miss you.
Part of one’s body has been riven.
One recollects gestures,
mostly trivial. The way
he pinched a cigarette,
the way he crouched on a chair.
Now he is less than a living flea.
Where has he gone, this person
whom I loved? He is vapor now;
he is nothing. I remember
talking to him about the world.
What a rich place it became
within our vocabulary. I did not
love it half so much until
he spoke of it, until it was sifted
through the adjectives of our discussion.
And now my friend is dead.
His warm hand has been reversed.
His movements across a room
have been erased. How I wish
he was someplace specific. He
is nowhere. He is absence.
When he spoke of the things
he loved – books, music, pictures,
the articulation of idea –
his body shook as if a wire
within him suddenly surged.
In passion, he filled the room.
Where has he gone, this friend
whom I loved? The way he shaved,
the way he cut his hair, even
the way he squinted when he talked,
when he embraced idea, held it –
all vanished. He has been reduced
to memory. The books he loved,
I see them on my shelves. The words
he spoke still group around me. But
this is chaff. This is the container
now that heart has been scraped out.
He is defunct now. His body is less
than cinders; less than a sentence
after being whispered. He is the zero
from which a man has vanished. He
was the smartest, most vibrant,
like a match suddenly struck, flaring;
now he is sweepings in a roadway.
Where is he gone? He is nowhere.
My friends, I knew a wonderful man,
these words approximate him,
as chips of stone approximate
a tower, as wind approximates a song.
STEPHEN DOBYNS (b. 1941)
(for Ellis Settle, 1924-93)
Cleopatra’s Lament for Antony
Noblest of men, woo’t die?
Hast thou no care of me, shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty? O, see, my women:
The crown o’ the earth doth melt. [Antony dies.]
My lord?
O, wither’d is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls
Are level now with men: the odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
[…]
No more but e’en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks,
And does the meanest chares. It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods,
To tell them that this world did equal theirs,
Till they had stol’n our jewel. All’s but naught:
Patience is sottish, and impatience does
Become a dog that’s mad: then is it sin,
To rush into the secret house of death,
Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?
What, what, good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian?
My noble girls! Ah, women, women. Look,
Our lamp is spent, it’s out. Good sirs, take heart,
We’ll bury him: and then, what’s brave, what’s noble,
Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us. Come, away,
This case of that huge spirit now is cold.
Ah, women, women! come, we have no friend
But resolution, and the briefest end.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
(Antony and Cleopatra, IV.XV. 59-68, 73-91)
Dirge for Fidele
Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages’
Thou thy worldly task has done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ th’ great,
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke
Care no more to clothe and eat,
To thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor th’ all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash.
Thou has finish’d joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have,
And renowned be thy grave!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)
(Cymbeline, IV.II.258-81)
‘We say the dead depart’
We say the dead depart but can’t say where
And can’t imagine being nowhere, time
Full-stopped. But absence
Is here and now, we rub along
Shoulder to shoulder with the vacancies
The dead have left, doing the best we can
Less well with poorer means and greater need
In a worsened world, to fill them. This week
Everyone sees the deficit, time running out
Everyone has the dead man’s kindness in their view
Everyone needing it, no one
Meeting a friend of his this week
Has had an unkind word. And how alive
The world continues to be with things the dead man loved
Last week, goldfinches, say,
A charm, and how bereft they look, not so well admired, they want
Their due and look to us
The bereaved, his understudies.
DAVID CONSTANTINE (b. 1944)
‘Not, how did he die, but how did he live?’
Not, how did he die, but how did he live?
Not, what did he gain, but what did he give?
These are the units to measure the worth
Of a man as a man, regardless of birth.
Not what was his church, nor what was his creed?
But had he befriended those really in need?
Was he ever ready, with word of good cheer,
<
br /> To bring back a smile, to banish a tear?
Not what did the sketch in the newspaper say,
But how many were sorry when he passed away?
ANONYMOUS
from In Memoriam A.H.H.
(four stanzas from LXXXV)
This truth came borne with bier and pall,
I felt it, when I sorrowed most.
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all – […]
But I remained, whose hopes were dim,
Whose life, whose thoughts were little worth,
To wander on a darkened earth,
Where all things round me breathed of him. […]
Whatever ways my days decline,
I felt and feel, though left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine; […]
And so my passion hath not swerved
To works of weakness, but I find
An image comforting the mind,
And in my grief a strength reserved.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-92)
As Befits a Man
I don’t mind dying –
But I’d hate to die all alone!
I want a dozen pretty women
To holler, cry, and moan.
I don’t mind dying
But I want my funeral to be fine:
A row of long tall mamas
Fainting, fanning, and crying.
I want a fish-tail hearse
And sixteen fish-tail cars,
A big brass band
And a whole truck load of flowers.
When they let me down,
Down into the clay,
I want the women to holler:
Please don’t take him away!
Ow-ooo-oo-o!
Don’t take daddy away!
LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-67)
from Joyce: By Herself and Her Friends
If I should go before the rest of you
Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone,
Nor when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must,
Parting is hell,
But life goes on,
So sing as well.
JOYCE GRENFELL (1910-79)
Tract
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral –
for you have it over a troop
of artists –
unless one should scour the world –
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black –
nor white either – and not polished!
Let it be weathered – like a farm wagon –
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My God – glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
how well he is housed or to see
the flowers or the lack of them –
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass –
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom –
my townspeople what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreaths please –
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes – a few books perhaps –
God knows what! You realise
how we are about these things
my townspeople –
something will be found – anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.
For heaven’s sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that’s no place at all for him –
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down – bring him down!
Low and inconspicious! I’d not have him ride
on the wagon at all – damn him –
the undertaker’s understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!
Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind – as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly –
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What – from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us – it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963)
Gravy
No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. ‘Don’t weep for me,’
he said to his friends. ‘I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.’
RAYMOND CARVER (1939-88)
Haiku
Skylark
sings all day,
and day not long enough.
BASHŌ (1644-94)
translated from the Japanese
by Lucien Stryk & Takashi Ikemoto
3
I Am Not There
BODY & SPIRIT
When a man is born, it is but the embodiment of a spirit.
When the spirit is embodied, there is life, and when the spirit disperses, there is death.
LAO-TSE
If you are a Buddhist and believe in rebirth, then death is just a change of physical body, rather like the way one swaps old clothes for new ones once they are worn out. When our physical support is no longer capable of keeping us alive due to internal and external causes, the time has come to give it up and take a new one. In these conditions, dying does not mean that we cease to exist.
14TH DALAI LAMA
Death is in reality spiritual birth, the release of the spirit from from the prison of the senses into the freedom of God, just as physical birth is the release of the baby from the prison of the womb into the freedom of the world. While childbirth causes pain and suffering to the mother, for the baby it brings liberation.
RUMI
THE BODY DIES but the spirit survives is the message of many poems of mourning: ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep;/ I am not there. I do not sleep.’ These include poems by writers of different faiths, from the Zen Buddhist composers of Japanese haiku to the ascetic classical Arab poet, Abu al-Ala al-Ma‘arri.
Henry van Dyke’s short medi
tation on time (39), written for engraving on a sun-dial, was read at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, by her sister Jane, while her other sister Sarah chose to read Mary Lee Hall’s ‘Turn Again to Life’ (39). Written at least 50 years ago, the anonymous ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’ (38) has been attributed, at various times, to J.T. Wiggins, Mary E. Fry and Marianne Reinhardt, and more recently to a British soldier killed in Northern Ireland who left a copy for his relatives. The short poems in this book by Rumi are extracted from much longer works. Jalâluddin Rumi was a master of the Sufi tradition, the mystical branch of Islam; his teachings inspired the Whirling Dervishes.
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
ANONYMOUS
Song
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 shadow,