Skeptic
I hear the wind speak:
nothing but epitaph,
brass angels crying.
The church, a poor man’s box
that binds any guest
to the dying light
like some great weight.
I go down to the water
with my echo:
to say is to know.
Poems on the topic: death
Poems on the topic “death” on Poets.by.
Landsman
I bade adieu to a rose,
gave paper to a paper,
drank farewell and drank to one
that would have a place at sea—a seal
who had a great desire to go to sea—
and I went home and sat there
talking old, playing old
till it was time to go lay
in a fine urn.
Anadromous
hard is the funeral of the fish
that come in May
I must keep one in ice
Container terminal
morning ice
where they shit in the river
a dog is dead
Among the living
Rot is rot: full satisfaction
or the afternoon lull
at the office.
So write letters
to the dead and the mad.
They live all within
a door or two.
Wage
Work is a great garden of money
which will come up
in the chest, a place
with no water or land
where I glut myself on fear.
An ordinary garden demands joy
like a cook committed to folly,
but not money, which is such
a perfect version of death.
It needs to keep increasing,
the whole good night
full of miracle.
Inertia
This noise of never
a violent rose by the door.
I am hurt with looking.
I hope to die in place like a better mouth.
Lenore
I wrote against night and forgetting
for a lady still as thought
we had a plain dinner
among the graves
the hill slept
in the manner of cut stone
Terminal
alone in the west
her father is now every day
meeting with the end
a tree in a corner
would sing of water
Grave goods
The messenger
sits in his boat
expecting us.
How much
difference there is
between the old
and the dead!
As if there was never
another world
but my things—
and as if they
shall pass
with me.
Roadkill
A road is a table
upon which many
little worms creep
through stale,
gone things.
(De)composition
death is a miracle
making in the body (that is not finished)
most rare things
how could it be locked up
between two hopes
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