Five Short Poems About Death
October 30th, 2022
May Sarton
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure - if I can let you go.
I recite this poem to myself dozens, if not hundreds, of times each year. It’s the first poem about death that ever spoke to me like this. It was used as a chalice lighting at the very first staff meeting when I started working as a music director, and I fell in love at first listen. I didn’t know then how much it would grow to mean to me. This was before grief and I grew to know each other so intimately.
The poem took hold in me as an entreaty to avoid controlling things beyond my power. After so many recitations, hours spent picturing myself as treelike and unmoved, I was well-practiced by the first time I had a friend die in an accident. The poem makes wise grieving sound so solemn and quiet, but the night I felt its wisdom most deeply in my bones was anything but reserved.
In a nightclub, dancing, the DJ put on a song that my dead friend used to play when we would close the store together after a long shift. Tears began to fall down my cheeks as I continued to dance, and I felt her presence there with me. I felt unrestrained, embodied, and sharply alive. That connection ablaze between life and death, I saw the root of the tree. In her short life, my friend had given me a gift through this song and memory that she would never know.
It is both unfair and profoundly beautiful to realize that we will never in our lives know the scope of the impact we have on others.
2. Marie Howe
I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?
And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?
And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.
We all arrive in this world through the gates made by the passage of others; this is inevitable.
Ancestor practice is a valued form of spirituality for many people. I’ve seen the way it resonates for colleagues and congregants. For a long time, however, I struggled to feel connected to it. On several layers, it felt wrong for me -
I don’t have strong cultural practices, my blood ancestors were almost certainly responsible for inflicting a great deal of suffering on the ancestors of people I care about… But still I sought to understand, and uncovering three pieces of the puzzle has helped the picture begin to form.
First, there’s the reading I shared in the service earlier. The idea that the passage of death washes away those relational wounds that kept us apart in life is humbling and healing. It’s very Universalist - if all souls are saved, if nobody is going to hell, then suffering and brokenness get left to be sorted out in the world of the living. There’s breathing room there which allows for forgiveness.
Second came a conversation with a colleague, when I asked for her help understanding ancestor practices. As she shared with me, it was a beautiful opportunity to know her more deeply. And it helped me understand the importance of honoring those who paved the way for each of us to live out the parts of our lives we’re grateful for. Nobody got where they did in a vacuum. For me, I realized that there are a lot of queer people I would want to honor. Frida Kahlo and Storme Delarverie and Harvey Milk. People who gave much of their lives to make a space in the world for people like us. It feels beautiful to pay homage to this.
The third puzzle piece is this poem, the Gate by Marie Howe. It’s true that through our most complicated and messy experiences we become part of the world, in a Velveteen Rabbit sort of way. The shape left behind by those we love forms us as we pass through it.
3. Kahlil Gibran
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day
cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
I can’t write this sermon.
All week long, prayer after prayer and song after song spill from my fingers, but as time ticks closer to Sunday I can’t write this sermon. Finally I go for a midnight walk to clear my head and have a conversation with myself.
No, right now I don’t particularly feel like I exist, I explain. Don’t you know what’s going on out there? How can I exist when the hospitals are still full of people dying and it feels like no one has energy left to try and stop it. How can I be real when state after state is making abortion illegal and the radio is full of hateful people lying about my transgender siblings. How can I be alive when a handful of people are going to space for fun while my neighbors can’t afford insulin. How can I…?
And as the sidewalk rises ahead of me in the chill night air, spirit nudges me and says, “You can’t write about death if you won’t accept you’re alive. At some point you have to participate.”
I look down at my feet, and then I peer at the palms of my hands. “I’m alive.” I say out loud, startling a passing jogger. “This here is my physical body. It is the shape of my being. I am alive and I choose to participate.”
And like that, poems begin to fall into place in my mind.
4. Joe Newman:
I still pretend
You’re only out of sight
In another room,
Smiling at your phone.
I still pretend
You’re only out of sight, in another room,
Smiling at your phone.
Sometimes, it’s easier to miss the dead than the living.
These simple words evoke such a feeling - how close that lost loved one might be, just out of sight, and at the same time, the heartbreak of remembering we can never again wander into the other room and strike up a conversation with them.
But how often do we forget to notice when a living loved one really IS right nearby? How often do we snap at a family member seeking attention when it interrupts our focus, or leave an email from an old friend sitting unread because we’re busy?
There will inevitably be a last conversation with the ones we love, and in most cases we will not know it is the last. No, we should not live our lives with this hanging over our heads, filled with anxiety that death could come at any time. But we can allow it to remind us to pay attention to what matters.
If you are missing baking cookies for your late aunt, thank your aunt for the reminder and bake some for your neighbor. If you are missing skiing with your dad,
bring a photo of him with you when you teach your daughter to ski. If you’re just aching to call your old friend up for a chat, call another member of the congregation and tell him about your memories with that friend.
We can honor the dead by allowing their presence to guide us deeper into connection.
I’m going to let Wendell Berry have the last word now, his poem offered here as a prayer for us all, and as a dream for those countless named and unnamed who have been here with us in our memories today.
5. Wendell Berry
He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.
The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.
Radiance knows him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown lighter
than vision, he goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.
He's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.
