When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs he forgot
…the copperheads and the assassin . . . in the dust, in the
… cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street,
… cash and collateral turned ashes . . . in the dust, in the
… cool tombs.
Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in
… November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she
… remember? . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries,
… cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin
… horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any
… get more than the lovers . . . in the dust . . . in the cool
… tombs.
January 14, 2008 at 12:08 pm
paw paw ;-}
January 14, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Too dark.
January 15, 2008 at 11:36 am
“maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us–
as soft as feathers–
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow–
that is nothing but light–scalding, aortal light–
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.”
–from When Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field,
by Mary Oliver
January 17, 2008 at 4:42 am
“Dark” for sure. I was fasting from food and the internet for 5 days so set up this progression of poems to auto post while gone to create the illusion I was doing something.
But dark is a perspective that exists, though others do too, as Soma points out on catching the paw paw reference I figured he would like. I bet he laughed, right there in the face of death.
Death is a dark subject but some of the richest works of poetry concern it, and, IMHO, the greatest orchestral works are usually requiem masses.
And as I believe Shakespeare says somewhere, roughly to this effect: “If Death comes in the dark as a misstris, I will embrace here.”