Grief Poems
Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
......
The Ballad Of Father Gilligan
by William Butler Yeats
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day
For half his flock were in their beds
Or under green sods lay.
Once, while he nodded in a chair
At the moth-hour of the eve
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.
......
For Grief
by John O'Donohue
When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.
......
Minister For Exams
by Brian Patten
When I was a child I sat an exam.
This test was so simple
There was no way i could fail.
Q1. Describe the taste of the Moon.
It tastes like Creation I wrote,
it has the flavour of starlight.
Q2. What colour is Love?
......
Spotify Stalking
by Frangipani Rhett
I cried so hard last night
That I played a song on repeat
It was one I pulled from a Spotify playlist
That I want to assume is yours
It sounds like a lullaby
And I imagined you singing it to me
Telling me it'll be alright
And running your fingers down my face
......
Spotify Stalking
by Frangipani Rhett
I cried so hard last night
That I played a song on repeat
It was one I pulled from a Spotify playlist
That I want to assume is yours
It sounds like a lullaby
And I imagined you singing it to me
Telling me it'll be alright
And running your fingers down my face
......
Grief
by Ken Ripley
I cry and cry and don’t know why.
My body clenches into knots
As violent grief explodes in pain
Until it subsides into a sigh.
Regrets and barely hidden guilt
Flood away more fonder themes,
Leaving residues of memories
That lay behind like mud and silt.
......
Dancing in the Rain
by Bethany Burkey
As children we splashed around in puddles
And look for rainbows when the sky cleared.
Loving life and the simplicities of what made us happy.
Completely ignorant of the struggles of the world.
As we grew older, we grew bolder.
Instead of waiting for the rain to stop.
We’d simply run out the door as quickly as we could,
Smiling and holding each other’s hand.
......
A milky-eyed mourning dove
by Amy Michelle Mosier
A milky-eyed mourning dove
Sat upon a tombstone - tacit -
Inside the grounds of St. Francis
To admire a cache betroved.
A sentinel's duty - it bears -
Not broken by a morning beam -
Even the shuffle of the wind
Could not disturb the atmosphere.
......
Funeral
by Nora Doogan
The day of your funeral,
a strangeness clung to us all,
like woodsmoke in our hair
or a whiff of other people’s fabric conditioner.
That evening, putting clean clothes in a drawer,
I saw a loose cotton thread
and I did not recognise it for the everyday thing it was
but recoiled, horrified.
......
