Thursday, May 21, 2009

A Dying One

There is so much beautiful poetry about death. 

Emily Dickinson's multitudes - as most of her work - are some of my favorites. John Donne, James Joyce*, and William Cullen Bryant all tug at my heart strings as I contemplate the death of a dear one of my congregation (Thanatopsis speaks brilliantly to the particular person of which I write). 

But tonight, as I sit in teary wonder at the continual response I feel toward each one's death, I offer this piece by Mary Oliver. Does everyone's death bring thoughts of my own? No. But this one is close. He was young, joyful, fully alive. And he has walked with death and each of his friends/family with so much love and compassion. I want to be able to face my own demise as J is facing his. In Oliver's words, J did not just "visit this world" - he lived: he "was a bride married to amazement / [he] was the bridegroom, taking the world into [his] arms". Even in his dying, he lives. And he will continue to live in each of us whom he touched.

Blessings to you, J, on this journey you have begun. Blessings to us, your earthly "family", as we continue the journey we are on. 

When Death Comes

Mary Oliver

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press).

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;


when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,


I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?


And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,


and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,


and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,


and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.


When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.


When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.


I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.




*I know it is considered prose, but Joyce's short story "The Dead" closes in a way that speaks poetically to me: 

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."


1 comment:

jamie said...

This is a lovely reflection. I especially like the selection from Bryant. Wow. Keep writing your way through it--it's the only way.