Unusual Funeral Poetry

extract from raw with love

I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.

- Charles Bukowski

Funeral Prayer

Today we friends and strangers meet
because our friend is now complete.
She has left time. Perhaps we feel
we are the ghosts and her the real -
so fixed and constant does she seem,
so starlike. May the human dream
arise again to find her woken
at its heart, though to be spoken
once is as miraculous
as a thousand times. What utters us,
blind nature, told the trees and birds
and bright stars; yet of all the words
we knew, her name was the most dear.
We give thanks she was spoken here.

- Don Paterson

After I Have Gone

Speak my name softly after I have gone.
I loved the quiet things, the flowers and the dew,
Field mice; birds homing; and the frost that shone
On nursery windows when my years were few;
And Autumn mists subduing hill and plain
And blurring outlines of those older moods
That follow, after loss and grief and pain –
And last and best, a gentle laugh with friends,
All bitterness foregone, and evening near.
If we be kind and faithful when day ends,
We shall not meet that ragged starveling “fear”
As one by one we take the unknown way –
Speak my name softly – there’s no more to say.

- Vera Arlett

Darling

You might forget the exact sound of her voice,
Or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her quiet weeping
Curled into the shape of a half moon,

When smaller than her self, she seemed already to be leaving
Before she left, when the blossom was on the trees
And the sun was out, and all seemed good in the world.
I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –

Heil Ya Ho Boys, Let her go Boys
And when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
Already a slip of a girl again, skipping off,
Her heart light, her face almost smiling.

And what I didn’t know, or couldn’t see then,
Was that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands

- Jackie Kay

Blessing for the Brokenhearted

There is no remedy for love but to love more.
– Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.

- Jan Richardson

most importantly love
like it’s the only thing you know how
at the end of the day all this
means nothing
this page
where you’re sitting
your degree
your job
the money
nothing even matters
except love and human connection
who you loved
and how deeply you loved them
how you touched the people around you
and how much you gave them

- Rupi Kaur

A Farewell at Eden Valley Natural Burial Ground

We shall rest you in the clay and flint of the Eden Valley and return you to the elements: 

To the earth and the woods,

To the bluebells in Spring

and the evergreens in Winter.

You shall rest beneath the open sky,

In sunshine and in rain,

In the stillness and the breeze,

Amidst the silence and the birdsong.

-

Their life is over, they are at peace.

- Carrie Thomas, Humanist Celebrant

Blessed are those who give meaning to our lives;
holy and precious is the example they leave behind.

We pray: May our sorrows diminish as we recall their strength.
May their wisdom protect us and help us to live.
Let our grief be transformed into tenderness for those who are still with us.

- Jewish prayer
See The Inspired Funeral

Adrift

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

- Mark Nepo

Grief

Somewhere in the Sargasso Sea
the water disappears into itself,
hauling an ocean in.

Vortex, how you repeat
a single gesture,
come round to find only

yourself, a cup full of questions,
perhaps some curl of wisdom,
a bit of flung salt.

You hold an absence
at your center,
as if it were a life.

- Richard Brostoff

All I can do, in what remains of my brief time,
is mention, to whoever cares to listen,
that a woman once existed, who was kind
and beautiful and brave, and I will not forget
how the world was altered, beyond recognition,
when we met.

- Michael Faber, from Undying: A Love Story

when death
takes my hand
i will hold you with the other
and promise to find you
in every lifetime

- Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers

The Dead

They’ve got a nerve, the dead,
with their insufferable absences
while we are left to dig
deep for the funeral director’s
order of service  -
coffin, music, incomprehension -
at the wake
distant cousins devour
pleasantries and leave early for trains.

They are never alone, the dead,
their unholy alliance with
the loved relative,
the stolen friend,
the young, the beautiful, the doomed,
injustice like
a blind scythe whistling in the high field
while we, resigned,
fill in paperwork for
doctor, registrar, florist,
poet.

They’ve got places to go, the dead,
behind veils they steal,
mysterious, incorporeal,
a conspiracy of silence,
raised and translated
to grandeur,
to questions no answer.

Pressing your head against cold stone,
you cannot move
at the thought
of clearing her room.

- Steve Halliwell

Absence

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing has changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

- Elizabeth Jennings

despite knowing
they won’t be here long
they still choose to live
their brightest lives

sunflowers - rupi kaur

Life After Death

These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the round
and the moss covers it
and in the spring the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.

- Laura Gilpin

For those laid to rest here

Under a soft blanket of fallen leaves,
safe in the hush of the whispering trees
I have come home.

My time here on earth is now done,
all the noise and the clamour, the joy and the pain,
the powerful life force that drove me onwards
has slipped away into the quiet of eternity,
and I am at peace.
From now on, I will dance through your memories
threading thoughts of love through your heart.
The pain of loss will gradually ease, and the sadness will lift.
the days will be lighter, and the nights not so long,
for I am still here.

When you walk through this place, you will feel me
in the gentle touch of the breeze on your face,
in the sunlight dappling the forest floor,
in the murmur of the branches high above you,
I am all around.

I have returned to the place from whence I came,
to the elements that created me.
The earth that gave me the life I so loved
has now welcomed me back to her,
to be at one with all her beauty.

Here, under my blanket of fallen leaves
I have found my resting place.
I have come home.

 - Fran Hall

Funeral

when i go from this place
dress the porch with garlands
as you would for a wedding my dear
pull the people from their homes
and dance in the streets
when death arrives
like a bride at the aisle
send me off in my brightest clothing
serve ice cream with rose petals to our guests
there's no reason to cry my dear
i have waited my whole life
for such beauty to take
my breath away
when i go let it be a celebration
for i have been here
i have lived
i have won at this game called life

- Rupi Kaur

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass

Reading #3

I wanted a perfect ending, so I sat down to write the book with the ending in place before there even was an ending. Now I’ve learned the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Like my life, this book has ambiguity. Like my life, this book is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, not knowing.

~ Gilda Radner, The Book of Life

This is real. This is very real.
This is absolutely inescapable.
And we are utterly unprepared.
And we have nothing to offer but each other and our broken hearts.
And that will be enough.

~ Rabbi Alan Lew

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle. 
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

~ W.S. Merwin

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver

Beannacht

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue

Some people never say the words
I love you
It's not their style
To be so bold
Some people never say those words
I love you
But like a child they're longing
To be told

~ Paul Simon

When I Die I want Your Hands On My Eyes

When I die I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny.

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind,
for you to smell the sea that we loved together
and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked.

I want for what I love to go on living
and as for you I loved you and sang you above everything,
for that, go on flowering, flowery one,

so that you reach all that my love orders for you,
so that my shadow passes through your hair, 
so that they know by this the reason for my song.

~ Pablo Neruda

“Goodbye... I love you. And I will go on loving. I will change as you will change. I wish you Christmas every time your eyes close. I pray that you will run with deer and soar with eagles, touching on the ground only long enough to find that man who will love you every bit as much as I do. And one you'll feel the same toward.

It is still early in the day for each of us despite the darkness up ahead. I know that there will be someone to lead you through the dark and someone you can lead. That it wasn't me is something that I can live with. I only hope that while you were adding to my life... I haven't interrupted anything within yours.”

~ From Coming Close to the Earth by Rod McKuen, 1977/8

Gratitude

What did you notice?

The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

When did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—

so the gods shake us from our sleep.

~ Mary Oliver

‘The sun never says to the earth, “you owe me”.
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights up the sky.’

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

~ Charles Bukowski

What I spent I had,
What I saved I lost,
What I gave I have.

~ Old German Motto

Recension Day

Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,
Reconsecrate the sacrilege,
Unspill the milk, decry the tears,
Turn back the clock, relive the years
Replace the smoke inside the fire,
Unite fulfilment with desire,
Undo the done, gainsay the said,
Revitalise the buried dead,
Revoke the penalty and the clause,
Reconstitute unwritten laws,
Repair the heart, untie the tongue,
Change faithless old to hopeful young,
Inure the body to disease
And help me to forget you please.

~ Duncan Forbes

The Embrace

You weren’t well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn’t for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You’d been out–at work maybe?–
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we’d lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you–warm brown tea–we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

~ Mark Doty

After the Funeral

We opened closets and bureau drawers
and packed away, in boxes, dresses and shoes, 
the silk underthings still wrapped in tissue. 
We sorted through cedar chests. We gathered
and set aside the keepsakes and the good silver
and brought up from the coal cellar
jars of tomato sauce, peppers, jellied fruit.
We dismantled, we took down from the walls, 
we bundled and carted off and swept clean. 
Goodbye, goodbye, we said, closing
the door behind us, going our separate ways
from the house we had emptied,
and which, in the coming days, we would fill
again and empty and try to fill again.

~ Peter Everwine

Bronzed

That dusty bubble gum, once ubiquitous as starlings, 
is no more, my love. Whistling dinosaurs now populate
only animation studios, the furious actions of angels
causing their breasts to flop out in mannerist
frescos flake away as sleet holds us in its teeth. 
And the bus-station's old urinals go under
the grindstone and the youthful spelunkers
graduate into the wrinkle-causing sun. The sea
seemingly a constant to the naked eye is one
long goodbye, perpetually the tide recedes, 
beaches dotted with debris. Unto each is given
a finite number of addresses, ditties to dart
the heart to its moments of sorrow and swoon. 
The sword's hilt glints, the daffodils
bow down, 
all is temporary as a perfect haircut, a kitten
in the lap, yet sitting here with you, my darling, 
waiting for a tuna melt and side of slaw
seems all eternity I'll ever need
and all eternity needs of me.

~ Dean Young

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

~ Jane Hirshfield

Continuum

“beautiful things fill every vacancy”
for C. D. Wright

filaments of her gift persistent mysteries palpable consciousness a world of naming of ablutions in time fighter instinct action, the pressing in, closing in heart thrums for a powerful image dazzling light: redemption! to reassess language, its tactility emotion, lyric, oblique irony twists, shifts by pulse & ear, resilient her consummate body poetics echo into night it hits us what is now absent from every bouquet cut like flowers before their time

~ Anne Waldman

Ever

Never, never, never, never, never.
—King Lear

Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never.”
They’re unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.
Never? Never ever again to see you?
An error, I aver. You’re never nothing,
because nothing’s not a thing.
I know death is absolute, forever,
the guillotine—gutting—never to which we never say goodbye.
But even as I think “forever” it goes “ever”
and “ever” and “ever.” Ever after.
I’m a thing that keeps on thinking. So I never see you
is not a thing or think my mouth can ever. Aver:
You’re not “nothing.” But neither are you something.
Will I ever really get never?
You’re gone. Nothing, never—ever.

~ Meghan O'Rourke

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

- Naomi Shihab Nye
Chosen by Hannah Jackson-McCamley

This poem might be appropriate when a death was sudden and unexpected, and perhaps farewells were left unsaid.

In Loving Memory: E.M.Butler

‘Goodbye’ - the number of times each day one says it!
But the goodbyes that matter we seldom say
Being elsewhere - preoccupied, on a visit,
Somehow off guard - when the dear friend slips away.

Tactfully, for ever. And had we known him
So near departure, would we have shut our eyes
To the leaving look in his? Tried to detain him
On the doorstep with bouquets of goodbyes.

I think of one, so constant a life-enhancer
That I can hardly yet imagine her dead;
Who seems, in her Irish courtesy, to answer
Even now the farewell I left unsaid.

Remembering her threefold self - a scholar,
A white witch, a small girl, fused into one -
Though all the love they lit will never recall her,
I warm my heart still at her cordial sun.

- Cecil Day-Lewis

The following lines taken from a hymn reflect that sometimes, in grief, one can only focus on the very near future.

Lines taken from hymn ‘Lead, Kindly light’

Keep though my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me.

Sometimes, sorrow feels fathomless.

The Depths of Sorrow, from Penguin Book of Oral Poetry

It is a free translation of an elegy from central India.

The depths of sorrow in tears have not been measured
The mountains and the hills will pass away
Like flooded rivers and streams, tears may flow
But what your destiny has given you must accept.
Brother, were I a teardrop I would fall like flooded waters
For the deep limits of sorrow’s tears are not yet found.

This poem touches on how disjointed the world can seem after someone has died. How were we planning holidays? The patterns of ‘normal’ life are changed, and won’t be the same again.

Death makes philosophers of us all

death makes philosophers of us all
the prospect of it in reality
disturbs time itself
lifelong patterns fall from us
as withered leaves lay bare the trees in winter
and did we really yesterday believe
in mortgages and birthdays
in homes and holidays next year
in such blind innocence.
philosophers are mad
or must become so
when face to face
with such great sadness.

- Susan Wallbank

Grief

Deep sobs -
that start beneath my heart
and hold my body in a grip that hurts.
The lump that swells inside my throat
brings pain that tries to choke.
Then tears course down my cheeks -
I drop my head in my so empty hands
abandoning myself to deep dark grief
and know that with the passing time
will come relief.
That though the pain may stay
there soon will come a day
when I can say your name and be at peace.

- Norah Leney

Shakespeare tells us to talk about our sorrow. We can’t argue with this wisdom.  If you don’t have someone you can talk to about how you are feeling, don’t be afraid to tell your GP and they will be able to put you in touch with bereavement support near you.

Macbeth

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.

- Shakespeare

Time heals. So the well-meaning friend may tell you.  Perhaps memorising these few lines will provide a good response?

Words about Grief

Time does not heal,
It makes a half-stitched scar
That can be broken and you feel
Grief as total as in its first hour.

- Elizabeth Jennings

Lost in Despair

Lately I have been letting my life
Fall into pieces about me.
All the old familiar ways have become meaningless.
I have been lost in despair’s dark depths.
I have been lost in a forest of ills,
Wandering alone and calling for help,
I have looked to death as an escape
From the intolerable agony within.
Now it is time for me to turn form death
And chart another path.
Girding myself with courage and with hope,
I must find new tasks
And make a new beginning from an old and finished ending.

- Marjorie Pizer

Overwhelmed

When I feel overwhelmed by destruction,
Let me go down to the sea.
Let me sit by the immeasurable ocean
And watch the surf
Beating in and running out all day and all night
Let me sit by the sea
And have the bitter sea winds
Slap my cheeks with their cold, damp hands
Until I am sensible again.
Let me look at the sky at night
And let the stars tell me
Of limitless horizons and unknown universes
Until I am grown calm and strong once more.

- Marjorie Pizer