Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

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 wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes - Mary Szybist

—how her loose curls float

above each silver fish as she leans in

to pluck its eyes—

 

You died just hours ago.

Not suddenly, no. You'd been dying so long   

nothing looked like itself: from your window,   

fishermen swirled sequins;   

fishnets entangled the moon.

 

Now the dark rain   

looks like dark rain. Only the wine   

shimmers with candlelight. I refill the glasses

and we raise a toast to you   

as so and so's daughter—elfin, jittery as a sparrow—

slides into another lap   

to eat another pair of slippery eyes   

with her soft fingers, fingers rosier each time,   

for being chewed a little.

 

If only I could go to you, revive you.

You must be a little alive still.   

I'd like to put this girl in your lap.

She's almost feverishly warm and she weighs   

hardly anything. I want to show you how   

she relishes each eye, to show you

her greed for them.   

 

She is placing one on her tongue,

bright as a polished coin—   

 

What do they taste like? I ask.

Twisting in my lap, she leans back

sleepily. They taste like eyes, she says.

People Who Died - Ted Berrigan

 

Pat Dugan……..my grandfather……..throat cancer……..1947.

 

Ed Berrigan……..my dad……..heart attack……..1958.

 

Dickie Budlong……..my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were

                                                        five to eight……..killed in Korea, 1953.

 

Red O’Sullivan……..hockey star & cross-country runner

                                                who sat at my lunch table

                                                            in High School……car crash…...1954.

 

Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan……..my friend, in High School,

                                       Football & Hockey All-State……car crash….1959.

 

Cisco Houston……..died of cancer……..1961.

 

Freddy Herko, dancer….jumped out of a Greenwich Village window

     in 1963.

 

Anne Kepler….my girl….killed by smoke-poisoning while playing

                                    the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital                         

                                    during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist….1965.

 

Frank……Frank O’Hara……hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.

 

Woody Guthrie……dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968.

 

Neal……Neal Cassady……died of exposure, sleeping all night

                                            in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico….1969.

 

Franny Winston……just a girl….totalled her car on the Detroit-Ann Arbor

                                    Freeway, returning from the dentist….Sept. 1969.

 

Jack……Jack Kerouac……died of drink & angry sickness….in 1969.

 

My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.

Dirge Without Music - Edna St Vincent Millay

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.

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” - Edna St Vincent Millay

 

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.