Death and Mourning

Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land.

There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization. Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.

No wreaths please— especially no hothouse flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes—a few books perhaps.

These external regions, what do we fill them with Except reflections, the escapades of death, Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof.

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death’s ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin… in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all.

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

Unless I’m wrong I but obey The urge of a song: I’m—bound—away! And I may return If dissatisfied With what I learn From having died.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

With anyone to death, comes so far short They might as well not try to go at all.

“Tell them that I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,” he said.

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.

Of this bad world the loveliest and the best Has smiled and said “Good Night,” and gone to rest.

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music.

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear.

“Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,” I cried. “My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied.”

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.