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Funerals

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  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Respite

    By Elane Kim
    It’s New Year’s.
    It’s New Year’s & the stars are white-hot & all your favorite dishes
    are flushed warm on the island: tteokguk for fortune, knife-cut noodles
    for longevity, persimmon pudding & a tin can of sardines.
    The nectarines are in season in our...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Today

    By Victoria Chang
    Jan.4.2022
    A call is just a call. I pick it up.

    Jan.6.2022
    I lift blankets looking for my father.

    Jan.7.2022
    When I take off the patch, your eye is gone.
    I spend the day in other people’s tears.

    Jan.9.2022
    Someone says your eyelid almost came off,
    the doctors tried...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Elegy for My Friend Who Was, among Other Things, an Orchestra Conductor

    By Ben Purkert
    A week apart, our birthdays
    formed a bridge. They always fell

    at the best time: snow over flowers
    like thoughts scattered suddenly

    over the phone. You want to know
    his name? He was the beautiful friend,

    the loudmouth, the one whose voice
    shook the walls until the...
  • Poem

    Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

    By Dylan Thomas
    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...
  • Poem

    A Brown Girl Dead

    By Countee Cullen
    With two white roses on her breasts,
       White candles at head and feet,   
    Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
       Lord Death has found her sweet.

    Her mother pawned her wedding ring   
       To lay her out in white;
    She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing   
       To...
  • Poem

    The Truth the Dead Know

    By Anne Sexton
    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...
  • Poem

    The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

    By Robert Lowell
    I

    A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket—
    The sea was still breaking violently and night   
    Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
    When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light   
    Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,   
    He grappled at the net
    With the coiled,...
  • Poem

    After great pain, a formal feeling comes – (372)

    By Emily Dickinson
    After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
    The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
    The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
    And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

    The Feet, mechanical, go round –
    A Wooden way
    Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –
    Regardless grown,
    A...
  • Poem

    I dwell in Possibility – (466)

    By Emily Dickinson
    I dwell in Possibility –
    A fairer House than Prose –
    More numerous of Windows –
    Superior – for Doors –

    Of Chambers as the Cedars –
    Impregnable of eye –
    And for an everlasting Roof
    The Gambrels of the Sky –

    Of Visitors – the fairest –
    For...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Sunday Morning

    By Wallace Stevens

          I

    Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
    Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
    And the green freedom of a cockatoo
    Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
    The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
    She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
    Encroachment of...
  • Poem

    O Captain! My Captain!

    By Walt Whitman
    O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
    The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
    The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
    While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and...
  • Poem

    An Arundel Tomb

    By Philip Larkin
    Side by sideSide by side To see a recent photograph of this tomb of the Earl and Countess of Arundel that Larkin is describing, click here. , their faces blurred,   
    The earl and countess lie in stone,   
    Their proper habitshabits Clothes ...
  • Poem

    Sonnet 71: No longer mourn for me when I am dead

    By William Shakespeare
    No longer mourn for me when I am dead
    Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
    Give warning to the world that I am fled
    From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell; 
    Nay, if you read this line, remember not
    The hand...
  • Poem

    The Season of Phantasmal Peace

    By Derek Walcott
    Then all the nations of birds lifted together
    the huge net of the shadows of this earth
    in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
    stitching and crossing it. They lifted up
    the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes,
    the shadows of glass-faced towers down evening streets,
    the...
  • Poem

    Psalm 23

    By Robert Alter
    A David psalm.
        The LORD is my shepherd,
                                  I shall not want.
        In grass meadows He makes me lie down,
                                  by quiet waters guides me.
        My life He brings back.
                                  He leads me on pathways of justice
                                                 for His name's...
  • Poem

    For a Father

    By Elise Partridge
    Remember after work you grabbed our skateboard,
    crouched like a surfer, wingtips over the edge;
    wheels clacketing down the pocked macadam,
    you veered almost straight into the neighbor's hedge?
    We ran after you laughing, shouting, Wait!

    Or that August night you swept us to the...
  • Poem

    Memorial

    By Clifton Gachagua
    To the young and able man who lets his death come in
    with veils in his face that say you can come in and claim
    a place among us. To the young man who closes his eyes
    to the parting of clouds and...
  • Poem

    Making a Fist

    By Naomi Shihab Nye
        We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
                                                                      —    Jorge Luis Borges

    For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
    I felt the life sliding out of me,
    a drum in the desert,...
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