Miscarriage

When I was a month pregnant, the great
clots of blood appeared in the pale
green swaying water of the toilet,
Dark red like black in the salty
translucent brine, like forms of life
appearing, jelly-fish with the clear-cut
shapes of things.

That was the only appearance made by that
child, the dark, scalloped shapes
falling slowly. A month later
our son was conceived, and I never went back
to mourn the one who came as far as the
sill with its information: that we could
botch something, you and I. All wrapped in
purple it floated away, like a messenger
put to death for bearing bad news.

--Sharon Olds (1942- ), American poet and professor at NYU, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot prize, from The Dead and the Living (1984). 

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
     And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
     The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
     No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
     To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
     Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
     Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
     (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
     Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
     That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
     Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
     Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
     Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
     As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
     To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
     Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
     Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
     And makes me end where I begun.

-- John Donne (1572-1631), Anglican priest, poet, essayist, Dean of St. Paul's in London, and founder of the Metaphysical Poets, whose feast day is today.

Sea Canes

Half my friends are dead.

I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.

Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk

on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion

of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.

The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger

that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes

brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.

~ Derek Walcott, born in 1930, Caribbean poet, playwright, and watercolorist, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature

Psalm 102

              O Lord, my praying hear;
              Lord, let my cry come to thine ear.
Hide not thy face away,
       But haste, and answer me,
In this my most, most miserable day,
       Wherein I pray and cry to thee.

              My days as smoke are past;
              My bones as flaming fuel waste,
Mown down in me, alas.
       With scythe of sharpest pain.
My heart is withered like the wounded grass;
       My stomach doth all food disdain.

              So lean my woes me leave,
              That to my flesh my bones do cleave;
And so I bray and howl,
       As use to howl and bray
The lonely pelican and desert owl,
       Like whom I languish long the day.

              I languish so the day,
              The night in watch I waste away;
Right as the sparrow sits,
       Bereft of spouse, or son,
Which irked alone with dolor’s deadly fits
       To company will not be won.

              As day to day succeeds,
              So shame on shame to me proceeds
From them that do me hate,
       Who of my wrack so boast,
That wishing ill, they wish but my estate,
       Yet think they wish of ills the most.

              Therefore my bread is clay;
              Therefore my tears my wine allay.
For how else should it be,
       Sith thou still angry art,
And seem’st for naught to have advanced me,
       But me advanced to subvert?

              The sun of my life-days
              Inclines to west with falling rays,
And I as hay am dried,
       While yet in steadfast seat
Eternal thou eternally dost bide,
       Thy memory no years can fret.

              Oh, then at length arise;
              On Zion cast thy mercy’s eyes.
Now is the time that thou
       To mercy shouldst incline
Concerning her: O Lord, the time is now
       Thyself for mercy didst assign.

              Thy servants wait the day
              When she, who like a carcass lay
Stretched forth in ruin’s bier,
       Shall so arise and live,
The nations all Jehova’s name shall fear,
       All kings to thee shall glory give.

              Because thou hast anew
              Made Zion stand, restored to view
Thy glorious presence there,
       Because thou hast, I say,
Beheld our woes and not refused to hear
       What wretched we did plaining pray,

              This of record shall bide
              To this and every age beside.
And they commend thee shall
       Whom thou anew shall make,
That from the prospect of thy heav’nly hall
       Thy eye of earth survey did take,

              Heark’ning to prisoners’ groans,
              And setting free condemned ones,
That they, when nations come,
       And realms to serve the Lord,
In Zion and in Salem might become
       Fit means his honor to record.

              But what is this if I
              In the mid way should fall and die?
My God, to thee I pray,
       Who canst my prayer give.
Turn not to night the noontide of my day,
       Since endless thou dost ageless live.

              The earth, the heaven stands
              Once founded, formed by thy hands:
They perish, thou shalt bide;
       They old, as clothes shall wear,
Till changing still, full change shall them betide,
       Unclothed of all the clothes they bear.

              But thou art one, still one:
              Time interest in thee hath none.
Then hope, who godly be,
       Or come of godly race:
Endless your bliss, as never ending he,
       His presence your unchanged place.

--Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621), Elizabethan poet and patron, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, from The Sidneian Psalms, 1599.

Easter Morning

 I have a life that did not become, 
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished: 
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or 
as on my lap a child 
not to grow old but dwell on 

it is to his grave I most 
frequently return and return 
to ask what is wrong, what was 
wrong, to see it all by 
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will not heal
and the child,
stirring, must share my grave
with me, an old man having
gotten by on what was left

when I go back to my home country in these
fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit
everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say, 
look how he’s shooting up, and the 
trinket aunts who always had a little 
something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark 
or a penny or nickel, and uncles who 
were the rumored fathers of cousins 
who whispered of them as of great, if 
troubled, presences, and school

teachers, just about everybody older 
(and some younger) collected in one place
waiting, particularly, but not for 
me, mother and father there, too, and others 
close, close as burrowing 
under skin, all in the graveyard 
assembled, done for, the world they 
used to wield, have trouble and joy 
in, gone 

the child in me that could not become 
was not ready for others to go, 
to go on into change, blessings and 
horrors, but stands there by the road 
where the mishap occurred, crying out for 
help, come and fix this or we 
can’t get by, but the great ones who 
were to return, they could not or did 
not hear and went on in a flurry and 
now, I say in the graveyard, here 
lies the flurry, now it can’t come 
back with help or helpful asides, now 
we all buy the bitter 
incompletions, pick up the knots of 
horror, silently raving, and go on 
crashing into empty ends not 
completions, not rondures the fullness 
has come into and spent itself from 

I stand on the stump 
of a child, whether myself 
or my little brother who died, and 
yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for 
for me it is the dearest and the worst, 
it is life nearest to life which is 
life lost: it is my place where 
I must stand and fail, 
calling attention with tears 
to the branches not lofting 
boughs into space, to the barren 
air that holds the world that was my world

though the incompletions
(& completions) burn out 
standing in the flash high-burn 
momentary structure of ash, still it 
is a picture-book, letter-perfect 
Easter morning: I have been for a 
walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook 
works without flashing in an abundant 
tranquility: the birds are lively with 
voice: I saw something I had 
never seen before: two great birds, 
maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked 
and –headed, came from the south oaring 
the great wings steadily; they went 
directly over me, high up, and kept on 
due north: but then one bird, 
the one behind, veered a little to the 
left and the other bird kept on seeming 
not to notice for a minute: the first 
began to circle as if looking for 
something, coasting, resting its wings 
on the down side of some of the circles: 
the other bird came back and they both 
circled, looking perhaps for a draft; 
they turned a few more times, possibly 
rising—at least, clearly resting— 
then flew on falling into distance till 
they broke across the local bush and 
trees: it was a sight of bountiful 
majesty and integrity: the having 
patterns and routes, breaking 
from them to explore other patterns or 
better ways to routes, and then the 
return: a dance sacred as the sap in 
the trees, permanent in its descriptions 
as the ripples round the brook’s 
ripplestone: fresh as this particular 
flood of burn breaking across us now 
from the sun.

--A R Ammons (1926-2001), American poet, National Book Award winner in 1973 and 1993

Spring and Fall

to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now, no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
No mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, English Jesuit priest and poet

All Hallow's Eve; a Sonnet of Reclamation

Though Satan breaks our dark glass into shards 
Each shard still shines with Christ’s reflected light, 
It glances from the eyes, kindles the words 
Of all his unknown saints. The dark is bright 
With quiet lives and steady lights undimmed, 
The witness of the ones we shunned and shamed. 
Plain in our sight and far beyond our seeing
He weaves them with us in the web of being 
They stand beside us even as we grieve, 
The lone and left behind whom no one claimed,
Unnumbered multitudes, he lifts above
The shadow of the gibbet and the grave,
To triumph where all saints are known and named;
The gathered glories of His wounded love.

--Malcolm Guite (1957- ), Anglican priest, poet, singer-songwriter, and philosopher, from Sounding the Seasons, 2012

A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love; all, all some properties invest;
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all;
Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.

--John Donne (1572-1631), English poet, priest, preacher, and essayist

Only a Curl

I.
FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me, —

II.
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do,
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the violets press nearer than you. 

II.
Shall I speak like a poet, or run
Into weak woman's tears for relief ?
Oh, children ! — I never lost one, —
Yet my arm 's round my own little son,
And Love knows the secret of Grief.

IV.
And I feel what it must be and is,
When God draws a new angel so
Through the house of a man up to His,
With a murmur of music, you miss,
And a rapture of light, you forgo.

V.
How you think, staring on at the door,
Where the face of your angel flashed in,
That its brightness, familiar before,
Burns off from you ever the more
For the dark of your sorrow and sin.

VI.
God lent him and takes him,' you sigh ; —
Nay, there let me break with your pain :
God 's generous in giving, say I, —
And the thing which He gives,
I deny That He ever can take back again.

VII.
He gives what He gives. I appeal
To all who bear babes — in the hour
When the veil of the body we feel
Rent round us, — while torments reveal
The motherhood's advent in power,

VIII.
And the babe cries ! — has each of us known
By apocalypse (God being there
Full in nature) the child is our own,
Life of life, love of love, moan of moan,
Through all changes, all times, everywhere.

IX.
He 's ours and for ever. Believe,
O father ! — O mother, look back
To the first love's assurance. To give
Means with God not to tempt or deceive
With a cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.

X.
He gives what He gives. Be content !
He resumes nothing given, — be sure !
God lend ? Where the usurers lent
In His temple, indignant He went
And scourged away all those impure.

XI.
He lends not ; but gives to the end,
As He loves to the end. If it seem
That He draws back a gift, comprehend
'Tis to add to it rather, — amend,
And finish it up to your dream, —

XII.
Or keep, — as a mother will toys
Too costly, though given by herself,
Till the room shall be stiller from noise,
And the children more fit for such joys,
Kept over their heads on the shelf.

XIII.
So look up, friends ! you, who indeed
Have possessed in your house a sweet piece
Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need
Be more earnest than others are,—speed
Where they loiter, persist where they cease.

XIV.
You know how one angel smiles there.
Then weep not. 'Tis easy for you
To be drawn by a single gold hair
Of that curl, from earth's storm and despair,
To the safe place above us. Adieu.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), English poet and writer

The First Time Percy Came Back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him--
                               those white curls--
but he was unreachable. As music
is present yet you can't touch it.
"Yes, it's all different," he said.
"You're going to be very surprised."
But I wasn't thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. "Listen," he said,
"I miss that too.
And now you'll be telling stories
                               of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true,
but they'll be real."
And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"
And we walked down the beach together.

--Mary Oliver (1935- ), from Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, 2017, originally published in Dog Songs, 2013



Rest in peace, Tyco Scoopmire, the best of boys, April 10, 2006-August 1, 2018.

For D----, Dead By Her Own Hand

My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children's game--
I'm sure you must have played it too-- in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
For only an instant: That was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you've gone,
Who would no longer play the grown-ups' game
Where, balanced on a ledge above the dark,
You go on running and you don't look down,
Not ever jump because you fear to fall.

-- Howard Nemerov (1920-1999), US poet laureate 1963-1964, 1988-1990


Image: Diane Arbus (1923-1971), American photographer and artist, the poet's sister and the subject of this poem, who took her life on this day in 1971.

A Prayer for the Dead

We give back to you, O God, those whom you gave to us.

You did not lose them when you gave them to us,

and we do not lose them by their return to you.

Your dear Son has taught us that life is eternal

and love cannot die.

So death is only an horizon

and an horizon is only the limit of our sight.

Open our eyes to see more clearly,

and draw us closer to you that we may know

that we are nearer to our loved ones who are with you.

You have told us that you are preparing a place for us;

prepare us also for that happy place,

that where you are we may also be always,

O dear Lord of life and death.

–William Penn (1644-1718), Quaker and statesman

Song of a Second April

April this year, not otherwise
     Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
     Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
     Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,
     And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
     The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
     The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
     Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
     Go up the hillside in the sun,
     Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), from Second April (1921).

Sand and Water

All alone, I didn't like the feeling
All alone, I sat and cried
All alone, I had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside.

All alone, I came into this world
All alone, I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by.

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave.

All alone, I heal this heart of sorrow

All alone I raise this child
Flesh and bone, he's just bursting towards tomorrow
And his laughter fills my world and wears your smile.

I will see you in the light of a thousand suns
I will hear you in the sound of the waves
I will know you when I come, as we all will come
Through the doors beyond the grave.

All alone I came into this world
All alone I will someday die
Solid stone is just sand and water, baby
Sand and water and a million years gone by.

--Beth Nielsen Chapman, Sand and Water, 1997