Grief Poems

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
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Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.
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To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
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It may be misery not to sing at all,
And to go silent through the brimming day;
It may be misery never to be loved,
But deeper griefs than these beset the way.
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When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
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My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.
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Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.
The kine are couched upon the dewy grass;
The horse alone, seen dimly as I pass,
Is cropping audibly his later meal:
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O World! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
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How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
- Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
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Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
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We think forever for salvation,
We cannot live in separation.
Father is great solves situation,
Continuous is human migration.
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Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
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Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
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Once, at night, in the manor wood
My Love and I long silent stood,
Amazed that any heavens could
Decree to part us, bitterly repining.
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'There is no grief
which time does not lessen
or soften' -
so said Cicero, a man so often right;
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I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
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DEATH:
For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,
I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,
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O marriage-bells, your clamor tells
Two weddings in one breath.
SHE marries whom her love compels:
- And I wed Goodman Death!
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1 Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
2 How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
3 Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
4 And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.
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No time to prepare
Shoved over cliff by sorrows
Float down now, gently
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sometimes there is no expiration date on grief
the expiration date on grief is like an elastic band
the grief sudden intense stretches like an elastic band
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GRIEF WILL COME. GOOD WILL COME
[A]
It's just obvious,
Grief will visit and good also will greet us.
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THE NAME WE CALL GRIEF
Humans we loath writing home about,
The word call grief, I doubt,
If it's not a villian, known as grief.
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Grief, oh grief, you heavy weight,
A burden that no one can debate.
You come uninvited, unannounced,
And leave us feeling so deeply pounced.
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Today…some thoughts on grief because I am of the belief
just as life can give us joy…we can't escape its grief.

When we lose someone we love…life will never be the same it was before.
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TUNE: Chou Nu Er "Ugly Boy-Servant"/
Cai Sang Zi "Picking Mulberries"
TITLE: "Written on a Wall on the Way to Boshan"
- by Xin Qiji (1140-1207)
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Her grief fell from the balcony and broke into pieces, so she needed a new grief. When I went with her to the market the prices were unreal, so I advised her to buy a used grief. We found one in excellent condition although it was a bit big. As the vendor told us, it belonged to a young poet who had killed himself the previous summer. She liked this grief so we decided to take it. We argued with the vendor over the price and he said he'd give us an angst dating from the sixties as a free gift if we bought the grief. We agreed, and I was happy with this unexpected angst. She sensed this and said ‘It's yours'. I took it and put it in my bag and we went off. In the evening I remembered it and took it out of the bag and examined it closely. It was high quality and in excellent condition despite half a century of use. The vendor must have been unaware of its value otherwise he wouldn't have given it to us in exchange for buying a young poet's low quality grief. The thing that pleased me most about it was that it was existentialist angst, meticulously crafted and containing details of extraordinary subtlety and beauty. It must have belonged to an intellectual with encyclopedic knowledge or a former prisoner. I began to use it and insomnia became my constant companion. I became an enthusiastic supporter of peace negotiations and stopped visiting relatives. There were increasing numbers of memoirs in my bookshelves and I no longer voiced my opinion, except on rare occasions. Human beings became more precious to me than nations and I began to feel a general ennui, but what I noticed most was that I had become a poet.
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Baance se bhaD kar
koi bhi hari cheez
aagay nahin upjati
...

Better You Forget Me (In three Parts)by Ehsan Elahi Ehsan
Better You Forget Me Part-1
by
Ehsan Elahi Ehsan
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Grief not, grief not, dear friend,
For the death of the father.
Death has no power to touch the Father, remember.
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