Poems on Aging, Death, Depression, Grief, Suicide, & War
2. Adamshick, Carl: “Before”
3. Auden, W.H.: “Funeral Blues”
4. Bridgford, Kim: “Jumping”
5. Brown, Derrick C.: “Instead of Killing Yourself”
6. Crum, Robert: “A Child Explains Dying”
7. Dickinson, Emily: “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”
8. Digges, Deborah: “Trapeze”
9. Frost, Robert: “Acquainted with the Night”
10.Giovanni, Nikki: “Quilts”
11. Holt, Jeff: “Waiting Room”
12. Jarrell, Randall: “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
13. Kenyon, Jane: “The Blue Bowl”
14. McGough, Roger: “Let Me Die a Youngman’s Death”
15. Mitchell, Susan: “The Dead”
16. Pastan, Linda: “Departures”
17. Pastan, Linda: “The Hat Lady”
18. Pastan, Linda: “Vertical”
19. Plath, Sylvia: “Lady Lazarus”
21. Sexton, Anne: “The Truth the Dead Know”
22. Sexton, Anne: “Wanting to Die”
23. Thomas, Dylan: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
24. Turner, Bryan: “AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)”
25. Turner, Bryan: “Eulogy”
26. Updike, John: “Dog’s Death” and “Another Dog’s Death”
Further Exploration:
“The Addict” by Anne Sexton
“Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant
“Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne
This packet belongs to __________________________________________.
If found, please return to B-16 or Mrs. Garcia’s mailbox in B House office.
Page 1 of 26
Before
CARL ADAMSHICK (1969- ) He was born in Toledo, OH.
I always thought death would be like traveling
in a car, moving through the desert,
the earth a little darker than sky at the horizon,
that your life would settle like the end of a day
and you would think of everyone you ever met,
that you would be the invisible passenger,
quiet in the car, moving through the night,
forever, with the beautiful thought of home.
Page 2 of 26
Funeral Blues (also known as “Stop All the Clocks”)
W. H. AUDEN (1907-1973)
 You can hear this read on YouTube in a scene from the 1994 film, Four 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 in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe 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.
(published 1936)
Page 3 of 26
Jumping
KIM BRIDGFORD (You can hear her read this at Measure online.)
— September 11, 2011
Sometimes I think of them, when I am kept
Awake at night. It was a workday morning
When they died, an ordinary morning when they leapt.
They made it look so easy, therefore earning
Our respect, like a complicated skill.
You can forget it was not easy at all.
They didn’t seem to pause. Like cherubim —
The office staff, accountants, businessmen —
Within the ash of morning, they would glisten,
Remembering that love’s a crucible,
And wishing — as did we — for a hand (something!)
To tap the heavens, see if God’s at home.
And fell. Such quiet in their terror-song.
We could not look away, watched far too long.
Page 4 of 26
Instead of Killing Yourself
DERRICK C. BROWN lives in Austin, TX.
Wait until
a year from now
where you say,
“Holy ****,
I can’t believe I was going to kill myself before I etcetera’d…
before I went skinny dipping in Tennessee,
made my own IPA,
tried out for a game show,
rode a camel drunk,
learned to waltz with clumsy old people,
photographed electric jellyfish,
built a sailboat from trash,
taught someone how to read,
etc. etc. etc.”
The red washing
down the bathtub
can’t change the color of the sea
at all.
From Margie Volume 8, 2009
Page 5 of 26
A Child Explains Dying
ROBERT CRUM
First you close your eyes.
Then you hold your breath.
Then, when it gets too heavy to hold,
you let it go. And it drops to the floor
like a stone. But without a sound.
And then your mother comes to the door
and calls you, saying,
“Come out here this instant!
Your breakfast is getting cold.”
And then your father comes to the door
and calls you, saying,
“No son of mine is going to lie
in bed all day. No son of mine
Is going to be late for school”
And then they shake you,
and when you don’t move
they see the mistake they made
and they cry and cry and cry.
And then they comb your hair
and brush your teeth
and dress you in a suit and tie
just like for Sunday School
And then they bury you in the dirt.
And your teacher gives your desk to someone else.
And your brothers wear your clothes
that you’ll never need again
because you’re a little lamb at the feet
of Jesus in Heaven—you’re a little wooly thing
up in the clouds, going baaa, baaa.
1984. From The Ploughshares Poetry Anthology (1987)
Page 6 of 26
Because I could not stop for Death (712)
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886) She was born in Amherst, MA.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess – in the Ring –
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed us –
The Dews drew quivering and chill –
For only Gossamer, my Gown –
My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground –
The Roof was scarcely visible –
The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Page 7 of 26
Trapeze
DEBORAH DIGGES (1950-2009) She was born in Jefferson, Missouri.
 You can hear her read this poem aloud at poets.org.
See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.
O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,
or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,
diving, recovering, balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,
wind from revolving doors or currents off the river.
Some are as children on swings pumping higher and higher.
Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See, they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky
Page 8 of 26
Acquanited with the Night
ROBERT FROST (1874-1963) Born in San Francisco, CA, he spent much of his time in rural New England.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Page 9 of 26
Quilts
NIKKI GIOVANNI (1943- )
(for Sally Sellers)
Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure
No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold
I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection
I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past
I offer no apology only
this plea:
When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm
And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers
And cuddle
near
Page 10 of 26
Waiting Room
JEFF HOLT
This is the place where families cross their legs
And stare, sightless, at unobtrusive art.
This is the place where every minute drags
Like a dead body heaved onto a cart.
A mother clasps her hands, as if in prayer,
Then bows her head and curses quietly.
A husband thinks that if he’d just seen more
His wife would not have needed surgery.
Death breathes upon these souls who wait in need
Of angels wearing scrubs to proffer grace.
All wait alone, and none are reassured
By memories of a loved one’s pleading face.
In purgatory they await the words
Of gods who fail as often as succeed.
from The Raintown Review, Vol. #10, Issue #1 (2011?)
Page 11 of 26
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
RANDALL JARRELL (1914-1965) He was born in Nashville, Tennessee.
This poem was published in 1945.
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” is about the death of a gunner in a Sperry ball turret on a World War II
American bomber aircraft. Jarrell, who served in the Army Air Forces, provided the following explanatory note:
A ball turret was a Plexiglass sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber
machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter
attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside down in his little sphere. The
fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose.
Page 12 of 26
The Blue Bowl
JANE KENYON (1947-1995) She was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.
We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows keener than these.
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.
from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, 1996
Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota
Page 13 of 26
Let Me Die a Youngman's Death
ROGER MCGOUGH (1937- )
Let me die a youngman's death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death
When I'm 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party
Or when I'm 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber's chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides
Or when I'm 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one
Let me die a youngman's death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
'what a nice way to go' death
Page 14 of 26
The Dead
SUSAN MITCHELL
At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.
from The Water Inside the Water, 1994
Page 15 of 26
Departures
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
They seemed to all take off
at once: Aunt Grace
whose kidneys closed shop;
Cousin Rose who fed sugar
to diabetes;
my grandmother’s friend
who postponed going so long
we thought she’d stay.
It was like the summer years ago
when they all set out on trains
and ships, wearing hats with veils
and the proper gloves,
because everybody was going
someplace that year,
and they didn’t want
to be left behind.
Page 16 of 26
The Hat Lady
LINDA PASTAN (1932-
) She was born in New York, NY.
In a childhood of hats—
my uncles in homburgs and derbies,
Fred Astaire in high black silk,
The yarmulke my grandfather wore
Like the palm of a hand
Cradling the back of his head—
only my father went hatless,
even in winter.
And in the spring,
when a turban of leaves appeared
on every tree, the Hat Lady came
with a fan of pins in her mouth
and pins in her sleeves, the Hat Lady came—
that Saint Sebastian* of pins,
to measure my mother’s head.
I remember a hat of dove-grey felt
that settled like a bird
on the nest of my mother’s hair.
I remember a pillbox that tilted
over one eye—pure Myrna Loy,
and a navy straw with cherries caught
at the brim that seemed real enough
for a child to want to pick.
Last year when the chemicals
took my mother’s hair, she wrapped
a towel around her head. And the Hat Lady came,
a bracelet of needles on each arm,
and led her to a place
where my father and grandfather waited,
head to bare head, and Death
winked at her and tipped his cap.
* Saint Sebastian was martyred by being shot through with arrows.
Page 17 of 26
Vertical
LINDA PASTAN (1932- )
Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality
of trees
which we notice
in December
as if for the first time:
row after row
of dark forms
yearning upwards.
And since we will be
horizontal ourselves
for so long,
let us now honor
the gods
of the vertical:
stalks of wheat
which to the ant
must seem as high
as these trees do to us,
silos and
telephone poles,
stalagmites
and skyscrapers.
but most of all
these winter oaks,
these soft-fleshed poplars,
this birch
whose bark is like
roughened skin
against which I lean
my chilled head,
not ready
to lie down.
Page 18 of 26
Lady Lazarus
SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963 suicide) She was born in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Just FYI: In the Bible (John 11:1-45), Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?—
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot—
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
Page 19 of 26
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr god, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
23-29 October 1962. From The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, Harper & Row.
Page 20 of 26
The Truth the Dead Know
ANNE SEXTON
For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.
My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.
And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in the stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
Page 21 of 26
Wanting to Die
ANNE SEXTON (1928-1974 suicide)
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
Page 22 of 26
Do not go gentle into that good night
DYLAN THOMAS (1914-1953) A Welsh poet, he was born in Swansea, Wales.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Page 23 of 26
AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds,
just under the turbulence, with anesthetics
dripping from an IV into her arm,
and the flight surgeon says The shrapnel
cauterized as it traveled through her
here, breaking this rib as it entered,
burning a hole through the left lung
to finish in her back, and all of this
she doesn’t hear, except perhaps as music —
that faraway music of people’s voices
when they speak gently and with care,
a comfort to her on a stretcher
in a flying hospital en route to Landstahl,
just under the rain at midnight, and Thalia
drifts in and out of consciousness
as a nurse dabs her lips with a moist towel,
her palm on Thalia’s forehead, her vitals
slipping some, as burned flesh gives way
to the heat of the blood, the tunnels within
opening to fill her, just enough blood
to cough up and drown in; Thalia
sees the shadows of people working
to save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
cannot hear them any longer,
and when she closes her eyes
the most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
tangerine washing into Russian blue,
with the droning engine humming on
in a dragonfly’s wings, island palms
painting the sky an impossible hue
with their thick brushes dripping green…
a way of dealing with the fact
that Thalia Fields is gone, long gone,
about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, ten thousand feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,
though no one hears it, because nothing can be heard
where pilots fly in blackout, the plane
like a shadow guiding the rain, here
in the droning engines of midnight.
From pp. 15-16 of Here, Bullet (2005)
Page 24 of 26
Eulogy
BRYAN TURNER (1967- ) He is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq and
Bosnia. He currently lives in California.
 You can hear him read this on YouTube.
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
PFC B. Miller
(1980—March 22, 2004)
From p. 20 of Here, Bullet (2005)
Page 25 of 26
Dog’s Death
JOHN UPDIKE (1932-2009)
She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
Another Dog’s Death by JOHN UPDIKE
For days the good old bitch had been dying, her back
pinched down to the spine and arched to ease the pain,
her kidneys dry, her muzzle white. At last
I took a shovel into the woods and dug her grave
in preparation for the certain. She came along,
which I had not expected. Still, the children gone,
such expeditions were rare, and the dog,
spayed early, knew no nonhuman word for love.
She made her stiff legs trot and let her bent tail wag.
We found a spot we liked, where the pines met the field.
The sun warmed her fur as she dozed and I dug;
I carved her a safe place while she protected me.
I measured her length with the shovel’s long handle;
she perked in amusement, and sniffed the heaped-up earth.
Back down at the house, she seemed friskier,
but gagged, eating. We called the vet a few days later.
They were old friends. She held up a paw, and he
injected a violet fluid. She swooned on the lawn;
we watched her breathing quickly slow and cease.
In a wheelbarrow up to the hole, her warm fur shone.
Page 26 of 26