POEMS ON GRIEF ...

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror

up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,

here's the joyful face you've been longing to see.

Your hand opens and closes, and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open

you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence

is in every small contraction and expansion,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated

as bird wings.

Rumi

 

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,

Put crepe bows around the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policeman wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden

 

Buried Love

I have come to bury Love

Beneath a tree,

In the forest tall and black

Where none can see.

I shall put no flowers at his head,

Nor stone at his feet,

For the mouth I loved so much

Was bittersweet.

I shall go no more to his grave,

For the woods are cold.

I shall gather as much of joy

As my hands can hold.

I shall stay all day in the sun

Where the wide winds blow, --

But oh, I shall cry at night

When none will know.

Sarah Teasdale