And when death finds me

And when death finds me,

I hope it whispers,

“Come now,

the fight is done,”

and takes my hand gently,

like an old friend

who understands

why I’m so tired.

I hope it says,

“You've carried enough,

let me hold this weight for you.”

I hope it promises,

“Here there is quiet.

Here you can rest.”

Ticus Poetry

King's College Chapel

When to the music of Byrd or Tallis,

The ruffed boys singing in the blackened stalls,
The candles lighting the small bones on their faces,
The Tudors stiff in marble on the walls.

There comes to evensong Elizabeth or Henry,
Rich with brocade, pearl, golden lilies, at the altar,
The scarlet lions leaping on their bosoms,
Pale royal hands fingering the crackling Psalter,

Henry is thinking of his lute and of backgammon,
Elizabeth follows the waving song, the mystery.
Proud in her red wig and green jewelled favours;
They sit in their white lawn sleeves, as cool as history. 

Charles Causley 1917 - 2003

And if memories

And if memories

are all I have left of you,

then I will swim deep

in those memories

for all the years 

that are left to me

Edward Lee b. 1957

Senior Citizens

You've seen the way they get around
With nothing beyond burdens left to lose
The drying spine that bends them near the ground
The way their ankles fold over their shoes
They've had their day and half of the day after
And all the shares they ever held in laughter
Are now just so many old engravings
Their sands have run out long before their savings
And the fun ran out so long before the sands
They've lost touch with the touch of other hands
That once came to caress and then to help
A single tumble means a broken hip
The hair grows thinner on the scalp
And thicker on the upper lip
And who is there to care, or left to please?
It's so easy when we're young
For me to wield a silver tongue
And cleverly place you among
The girls the boys have always sung
It's so simple when it's you
For me to coax from my guitar
The usual on how fine you are
Like this calm night, like that bright star
And the rest would follow on
The rest would follow on
And there'll be time to try it all
I'm sure the thrill will never pall
The sand will take so long to fall
The neck so slim, the glass so tall

Clive James 1939 - 2019

(Music by Pete Atkin b. 1945)

Atlas

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

Ursula Askham Fanthorpe 1929 - 2009

Don't Cry, Darling, It's Blood All Right

Whenever poets want to give you the idea that something is particularly meek and mild,

They compare it to a child,

Thereby proving that though poets with poetry may be rife

They don’t know the facts of life.

If of compassion you desire either a tittle or a jot,

Don’t try to get it from a tot.

Hard-boiled, sophisticated adults like me and you

May enjoy ourselves thoroughly with Little Women and Winnie-the-Pooh,

But innocent infants these titles from their reading course eliminate

As soon as they discover that it was honey and nuts and mashed potatoes instead of human flesh that Winnie-the-Pooh and Little Women ate.

Innocent infants have no use for fables about rabbits or donkeys or tortoises or porpoises,

What they want is something with plenty of well-mutilated corpoises.

Not on legends of how the rose came to be a rose instead of a petunia is their fancy fed,

But on the inside story of how somebody’s bones got ground up to make somebody else’s

bread.

They go to sleep listening to the story of the little beggarmaid who got to be queen by

being kind to the bees and the birds,

But they’re all eyes and ears the minute they suspect a wolf or a giant is going to tear

some poor woodcutter into quarters and thirds.

It really doesn’t take much to fill their cup;

All they want is for somebody to be eaten up.

Therefore I say unto you, all you poets who are so crazy about meek and mild little

children and their angelic air,

If you are sincere and really want to please them, why just go out and get yourselves

devoured by a bear.

Ogden Nash 1902 - 1971, from Parents Keep Out

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies 1971 - 1940

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.



Pablo Neruda 1904 - 1973

If I Wanted A Boat

I would want a boat, if I wanted a

boat, that bounded hard on the waves,
that didn't know starboard from port
and wouldn't learn, that welcomed
dolphins and headed straight for the
whales, that, when rocks were close,
would slide in for a touch or two,
that wouldn't keep land in sight and
went fast, that leaped into the spray.
What kind of life is it always to plan
and do, to promise and finish, to wish
for the near and the safe? Yes, by the
heavens, if I wanted a boat I would want
a boat I couldn't steer. 

Mary Oliver 1935 - 2019

She sweeps with many-colored brooms

She sweeps with many-colored brooms,
And leaves the shreds behind;
Oh, housewife in the evening west,
Come back, and dust the pond!
 
You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you’ve littered all the East
With duds of emerald!
 
And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars—
And then I come away.

Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886

The world is full of trouble

The world is full of trouble,
From top to bottom.
But all can be swiftly healed
By the balm of love.

Rumi 1207 – 1273

Friendship After Love

After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
    Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
    In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
    So after Love has led us, till he tires
    Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
    Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
    Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1850 - 1919

This is what you shall do (from Leaves of Grass)

This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman 1819 - 1892

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

William Butler Yeats 1865 - 1939

Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes, 
Smiles awake you when you rise ; 
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, 
And I will sing a lullaby, 
Rock them, rock them, lullaby. 

Care is heavy, therefore sleep you, 
You are care, and care must keep you ; 
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, 
And I will sing a lullaby, 
Rock them, rock them, lullaby. 

Thomas Dekker 1572 - 1632

Understanding

I understood the rest too well,
And all their thoughts have come to be
Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell
Of a sunny shallow sea.

But you I never understood,
Your spirit's secret hides like gold
Sunk in a Spanish galleon
Ages ago in waters cold.

Sara Teasdale 1884 – 1933

October's Bright Blue Weather

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

Helen Hunt Jackson 1830 - 1885

My life closed twice before its close

My life closed twice before its close— 
It yet remains to see 
If Immortality unveil 
A third event to me 

So huge, so hopeless to conceive 
As these that twice befell. 
Parting is all we know of heaven, 
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson 1830 - 1886

The Moment

The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Margaret Atwood 1939 -

Sonnet: Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

John M. Ford 1957 - 2006