As you probably guessed from the lack of post last month, I didn’t get to read much poetry. I had plans to read Amber McBride’s Thick with Trouble but between work and apartment hunting, reading took a backseat. Not for very long since I didn’t hesitate to pick up Funeral Readings and Poems at Barnes and Noble after my shift, for both personal reasons and writing inspiration for the Cat Isekai Story.
I know death is still a topic most aren’t comfortable discussing and the way we grieve varies person to person. But I also believe just as many people are more open to having these conversations throughout their lives rather than at the end of it. Others putting those feelings into words tends to help that process along.
Funeral Readings and Poems is divided into different sections to better express the enormity of death and loss as well as the emotions we experience between. I read through the “Funeral Blues” and “Love Lives Beyond” sections before stopping a few pages into “A Summing Up.” This isn’t exactly like last years post where I gave specific reasons as to why I enjoyed the ones picked, but I wanted to share my favorite poems and passages from what I’ve read so far. And so we arrived here, with five for your perusal:
Dirge without Music
The answer quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love –
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
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.
Sea Canes
O earth, the number of friends you keep
– Derek Walcott
exceeds those left to be loved.
On Pain
And you would accept the seasons of your
– from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran
heart, even as you have always accepted the
seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through
the winters of your grief.
What though the radiance which was once so bright
– from Intimations of Immortality, by William Wordsworth
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the
flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
Farewell my friends
“It was beautiful
– Rabindranath Tagore
As long as it lasted
The journey of my life.
Until the next post,
.chel
Reading Rites 