Water

    
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

--Philip Larkin (1922-1985), English poet, novelist, and librarian, and confirmed agnostic if not atheist.

For someone who did not believe in God, Larkin nonetheless read the Bible and admired the architecture and function of church. One senses almost a longing to believe-- yet his preocupation with death did not allow it.

Image: Westland Tai Poutini National Park lake, New Zealand

Church Going

  

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

-- Philip Larkin (1922-1985) English poet, probable agnostic or atheist,  and librarian. 

Larkin reading his poem:

Aubade

    

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

-- Philip Larkin (1922-1985)- English poet, novelist, and librarian, and "Anglican agnostic." 

Larkin's dread of death comes through strongly here, with a bleak view of the meaninglessness of life amid a stark existential void.

Image: "Man Alone in a Room, by Darren Coxen

Thanatopsis

   To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—
Comes a still voice— Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

   Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings,
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

-- William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), poet, lawyer, and editor, premier American poet of his age. this was one of the most popular poems of the mid-19th century. 

The poem's title literally means, "a consideration of death," which is amazing considering this was one of Bryant's first poems, possibly begun when he was 17. A natural argument against the closing lines, which urges one to live so that one faces death in trust of rest and knowledge that we are not alone in death, might be found in Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." The song "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," by Deathcab for Cutie, also turns upon this idea.

Lovely commentary by Jerry Harp in the Kenyon Review here.

Image: A gravestone in a cemetery in Elsberry, MO.

The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
          Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
          Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
          His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
          Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
          With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
          Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
          Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
          Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
          Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
          To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
          That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
          And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
          And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
          Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
          Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
          Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
          Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
          Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
          In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
          His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
          Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
          His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
          Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
          The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
          Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
          Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
          Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
          Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
          A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
          Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
          No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
          We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
          And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

--William Cowper (1731-1800), prominent English poet and inspiration to the early Romantics. This was believed to be his last poem written before his death. It is featured in the film version of the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, chosen by screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson. Cowper was listed as Marianne's favorite poet in the novel, but the poem read by Edward was left unnamed. Technically this choice is an anachronism, as the novel is set between 1795 and 1800, and this poem was published posthumously in 1803.

Image: Man Overboard, Rescue Launch from HMS 'St Jean d'Acre' by Oswald Walters Bryerly (1817-1894)

Pyrosymphonie

   

You and I, when our days are done, must say
Without exactly saying it, goodbye.
If we could choose at such a time one free
Embodiment which might, by being the last,
Stand in the account somehow as one
Generous entry putting the whole in credit,
What and where would it be, that final choice?

There are times such as when we have had them
Must serve in their completeness for the fancy,
For they are all we get. As yesterday,
Breathing in the wood, crouching for ceps.
And just a week ago, the eyes narrowing
For twenty porpoises sewing the waves
Beyond West End, not seen for fifteen years.

And then last month, the heart syncopating,
We slipped from a canoe into the shallows
With golden Beynac above us, tall, half-robed.
That wood, that sea, that river, rooted or moving,
Survive in all their changes, year by year
In which we drift through them, seizing on hope,
Searching for our permanent lost shapes.

Perhaps for that moment we could be ourselves
For once, and somehow find ourselves in time
For the Assumption at Calvi, surprised by night,
The whole sky split by fire and dripping stars.
And we should live this passionate postscript till
Those shapes no longer named themselves as all
That they suggest, these mimes of the cascade:

Lamps of the hill town’s single street, guiding
Its evening Clios after each other down
To the pleasures of the coast, the pulse of light,
Celestial pinball, instantaneous blooms,
Paper in chimneys, headaches, calculations,
Ribbons, Spanish exclamation marks,
Cringing anemones, the sky shocked red,

A burst of dizzy bubbles in the kicklight
Of the downthrust of an ankle, following
Your swimming shape for ever for this moment
Onwards through weed-flagged crevices, as quick
As your shutter on these artificial fires
That live just longer than we might expect,
Though never giving time to say goodbye.

—John Fuller (1937- ), English poet, novelist, teacher, editor, Fellow Emeritus at Magdalen College, and critic

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

    

Love of mine, someday you will die,
But I'll be close behind--
I'll follow you into the dark;
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white,
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark.

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule,
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black.
I held my tongue as she told me, "Son, 

Fear is the heart of love,"
So I never went back.

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

You and me have seen everything to see,
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes 

are all worn down. The time for sleep is now
But it's nothing to cry about,
'Cause we'll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms....

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the "No's" on their vacancy signs;
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I'll follow you into the dark--
Then I'll follow you into the dark.

--Benjamin Gibbard (1976- ), American songwriter and musician who performs as the lead singer for the band Death Cab for Cutie.

Video here:

Those Winter Sundays

 

    

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

-- Robert Hayden  (1913-1980), born Asa Bundy Sheffey, devout Baha'i, poet, and professor, first African American appointed Poet Laureate, 1976-1978.

Robert Hayden reads this poem:

Kiss

    

When Lynne saw the lizard floating

in her mother-in-law’s swimming pool,
she jumped in. And when it wasn’t
breathing, its body limp as a baby
drunk on milk, she laid it on her palm
and pressed one fingertip to its silky breast
with just about the force you need
to test the ripeness of a peach, only quicker,
a brisk little push with a bit of spring in it.
Then she knelt, dripping wet in her Doc Martens
and camo T-shirt with the neck ripped out,
and bent her face to the lizard’s face,
her big plush lips to the small stiff jaw
that she’d pried apart with her opposable thumb,
and she blew a tiny puff into the lizard’s lungs.
The sun glared against the turquoise water.
What did it matter if she saved one lizard?
One lizard more or less in the world?
But she bestowed the kiss of life,
again and again, until
the lizard’s wrinkled lids peeled back,
its muscles roused its own first breath
and she set it on the hot cement
where it rested a moment
before darting off.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

How to Apologize

   

Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeleton
you will need skill to expose, maybe the flying
silver carp that's invaded the Great Lakes, tumbling
the others into oblivion. If you don't live
near a lake, you'll have to travel.
Walking is best and shows you mean it,
but you could take a train and let yourself
be soothed by the rocking
on the rails. It's permitted
to receive solace for whatever you did
or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful
human. When my mother was in the hospital,
my daughter and I had to clear out the home
she wouldn't return to. Then she recovered
and asked, incredulous,
How could you have thrown out all my shoes?
So you'll need a boat. You could rent or buy,
but, for the sake of repairing the world,
build your own. Thin strips
of Western red cedar are perfect,
but don't cut a tree. There'll be
a demolished barn or downed trunk
if you venture further.
And someone will have a mill.
And someone will loan you tools.
The perfume of sawdust and the curls
that fall from your plane
will sweeten the hours. Each night
we dream thirty-six billion dreams. In one night
we could dream back everything lost.
So grill the pale flesh.
Unharness yourself from your weary stories.
Then carry the oily, succulent fish to the one you hurt.
There is much to fear as a creature
caught in time, but this
is safe. You need no defense. This
is just another way to know
you are alive.

-- Ellen Bass (1947- ), American poet, editor, and author

Image: Alfred Sisley, Fish On a Plate, 1865-1867