Japanese Hokku 4
What if the wind blows?
What if the leaves are scattered,
Now that they are dead?
Poems on the topic: death
Poems on the topic “death” on Poets.by.
The Saint-Gaudens Statue in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington
Are there no tears for other hearts to shed?
Those heavy eyes have drained the world of grief,
And yet no solace found, no drear relief.
Such as my heart would seek, and find, I know,
Had I been given the weight of that vast woe,
And wept through pain to peace! But you, instead,
Have drowned all healing in a shoreless sea
Of unforgiven wrong, whose every breath
Lifts windy clamor through the soul's hushed space.
Fanning to greater grief, to swifter glow.
The flame that smolders still in that bronze face,
Sadder than life, and sadder far than death,
Because of love renounced and joy to be.
And faith and hope and immortality.
Friends
Grief shall not be my friend! She shall not be
Companion of my table, path or bed.
She shall not share my salt nor break my bread,
Nor walk nor weep nor dream nor wake with me:
I will not trust her mournful company.
Nor listen to her whisperings of the dead,
Why should I heed her somber eyelid's red?
Tears are but chains and I, I would be free!
For grief would make a laggard of my will,
And me, a puny thing of anguished need,
A memory! And I would die at length,
Close to the thought of you — and loving still:
So will I choose a friend of stouter creed,
The wingless, tearless thing the heart calls strength.
Fantasy in Purple
Beat the drums of tragedy for me.
Beat the drums of tragedy and death.
And let the choir sing a stormy song
To drown the rattle of my dying breath.
Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun
To go with me
to the darkness
where I go.
To L. H. B. (1894–1915)
Last night for the first time since you were dead
I walked with you, my brother, in a dream.
We were at home again beside the stream
Fringed with tall berry bushes, white and red.
“Don’t touch them: they are poisonous,” I said.
But your hand hovered, and I saw a beam
Of strange, bright laughter flying round your head
And as you stooped I saw the berries gleam.
“Don’t you remember? We called them Dead Man’s Bread!”
I woke and heard the wind moan and the roar
Of the dark water tumbling on the shore.
Where--where is the path of my dream for my eager feet?
By the remembered stream my brother stands
Waiting for me with berries in his hands ...
“These are my body. Sister, take and eat.”
The Earth-Child in the Grass
In the very early morning
Long before Dawn time
I lay down in the paddock
And listened to the cold song of the grass.
Between my fingers the green blades,
And the green blades pressed against my body.
“Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?”
Sang the grass.
“Why does she weep on my bosom,
Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
Foolish little earth child!
It is not yet time.
One day I shall open my bosom
And you shall slip in--but not weeping.
Then in the early morning
Long before Dawn time
Across the Red Sky
Across the red sky two birds flying,
Flying with drooping wings.
Silent and solitary their ominous flight.
All day the triumphant sun with yellow banners
Warred and warred with the earth, and when she yielded
Stabbed her heart, gathered her blood in a chalice,
Spilling it over the evening sky.
When the dark plumaged birds go flying, flying,
Quiet lies the earth wrapt in her mournful shadow,
Her sightless eyes turned to the red sky
And the restlessly seeking birds.
Spanish Pilots
These were the ragged peon crews,
Half-bloods of Aztec women,
Of Spaniards and adventurers
Who were not seeking heaven!
But out on the broad seas driven,
And from the Horn to Sitka,
They searched for deep-sea findings
The whole unknown way,
With "small ringing of bells
And no trumpet blare,
Empty stomachs, and empty guns,
But plenty of prayer."
And if they failed of the findings,
Nothing behind but the branding irons,
Or slavery in the mines.
Yet they sang
Crimson Pool
Even you, dark pool--
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
There are deep reflections
Of a fiery breath.
To the waiting forest
Death does not come creeping
As it comes to men;
It comes shouting, waving banners,
Burning out its way with torches,
Hanging garlands now and then.
All the green walls of your silence
Hung with crimson,
Even you, dark pool--
Even you feel death.
On your soft brown surface
Northern Graveyards
Stony fields and lonely roads,
Meagre hamlets, very lean,
And most prosperous graveyards
Lying all between.
Each few miles a graveyard,
With its crouching column
And its urns and headstones,
Very dark and solemn.
But with what an accent!
Yellow, purple, red,
Lie the votive offerings
To this public dead.
Close beside the railway,
Where the smoke drifts high,
These are decked in garlands
For the passerby.
The Good People
The millway path looks like a wraith,
The lock is black as ink,
And silently in stream and sky
The stars begin to blink.
I see them pass along the grass
With slow and solemn tread:
Aoibheall, their queen, is in between--
A corpse is at their head!
They wander on with faces wan,
And dirges sad as wind.
I know not, but it may be that
The dead's of human kind.
The Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year
The last quarter moon of the dying year,
Pendant behind a naked cottonwood tree
On a frosty, dawning morning
With the back of her silver head
Turned to the waking sun.
Quiet like the waters
Of Galilee
After the Lord had bid them
“Peace, be still.”
O silent beauty, indescribable!
Dead, do they say?
Would God that I shall seem
So beautiful in death.
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