Funeral Poems

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
...

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells
...

Night funeral
In Harlem:

Where did they get
...

Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
...

I don't know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru.
...

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
...

After the funeral, mule praises, brays,
Windshake of sailshaped ears, muffle-toed tap
Tap happily of one peg in the thick
Grave's foot, blinds down the lids, the teeth in black,
...

Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
...

Lo! 'tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
...

I'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. And that's just the beginning.
Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born,
new orphans. They sit with their hands folded,
...

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
...

WEAVERS, weaving at break of day,
Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
...

PART I
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
...

The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
...

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
...

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
...

Through airy roads he wings his instant flight
To purer regions of celestial light;
Enlarg'd he sees unnumber'd systems roll,
Beneath him sees the universal whole,
...

HERE, O my heart, let us burn the dear dreams that are dead,
Here in this wood let us fashion a funeral pyre
Of fallen white petals and leaves that are mellow and red,
Here let us burn them in noon's flaming torches of fire.
...

In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws. In school he never led his classes,
...

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
...

Funeral prayers,
A solemn day, the mourners gather near,
A funeral prayer, for one we hold so dear,
Tears flow freely, as we bid farewell.
...

I know a funeral when I walk into one
I can tell between a funeral and a burial
They are two entirely different artworks
One is done on grand canvas, with drunken strokes
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Paupers' Graves
Plague pits were charnel houses
Cauldrons where hapless citizens
Too quickly dead and in such numbers
...

Yes, they were flowers
on this beautiful man
in his coffin at a Catholic church
I happened to drop by
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My invisible impediments are enough to inveterate romonstrances posited by bosom of my heinous bird.O, solicitude thou wilt beguile my melancholy; For me Melancholy is the rapture connexion between my soul and you. How domonstrations of my funeral was being adorned with colors of my poetry. Thou judged my funeral clumsy and buffon and some wert weeping. Gravedigger was crying over my grave as I was shrugged soul.
...

we come from the mother's womb
the sacred place before we breathe the air of misery:

we must pass through
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Since it is crowded around the coffin,
You leaned against the coffin and sat.
Your eyes face behind, the car moves ahead.
Sitting this way doesn't bring the dead back.
...

I remember her funeral as if it was yesterday…instead of a long time ago.
I remember it was the first step…the beginning of letting go.

The moment we realized…like a summer breeze gently whistling through a tree…
...

at my funeral,
my obituary is etched into my body
tales of my life transcribed on my skin
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A Very Grand Affair: The Duke of Wellington's State Funeral,1852
‘I vow to God I don't know what I'll do
With my awkward son Arthur
He is food for powder… nothing more'
...