Grief Poems
Lara
by George Gordon Byron
LARA.
CANTO THE FIRST.
I.
The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord —
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored:
......
Grief
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--
Most like a monumental statue set
......
April
by Louise Gluck
No one's despair is like my despair--
You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.
Do you suppose I care
......
Music
by Henry Van Dyke
I
PRELUDE
Daughter of Psyche, pledge of that last night
When, pierced with pain and bitter-sweet delight,
She knew her Love and saw her Lord depart,
Then breathed her wonder and her woe forlorn
Into a single cry, and thou wast born?
Thou flower of rapture and thou fruit of grief;
......
Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
A milky-eyed mourning dove
by Amy Michelle Mosier
A milky-eyed mourning dove
Sat upon a tombstone - tacit -
Inside the grounds of St. Francis
To admire a cache betroved.
A sentinel's duty - it bears -
Not broken by a morning beam -
Even the shuffle of the wind
Could not disturb the atmosphere.
......
Funeral
by Nora Doogan
The day of your funeral,
a strangeness clung to us all,
like woodsmoke in our hair
or a whiff of other people’s fabric conditioner.
That evening, putting clean clothes in a drawer,
I saw a loose cotton thread
and I did not recognise it for the everyday thing it was
but recoiled, horrified.
......
grief is a woman
by Schafer Bailey
I know a woman named Grief
she's haunting, beautiful in a tortured way
we have a strange agreement
she visits me in my lonesome
and in return I give her my energy
This agreement works for the most part
but Grief can be selfish
without thought of how she affects me
and so sometimes when she is neglected
she will permeate in my day to day
......
Things Fall Apart
by Gary Wolf
Things
fall apart, they
edge away from themselves
fleeing the free glue of partnership.
The center cannot hold
old attachments
grown thin with
time, pain, chaos, death.
George Floyd, Washington,
Israel, Gaza, Ukraine
......
Les
by Falling Awake
In just one split of an instant
Life force entirely withdrew
With your vitality vanished
I find myself severed in two
As heavens expand between us
I fear I’ll recall less each day…
So, I think back through the senses
To keep time’s forgetting away
......
