Grief Poems
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.
......
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 Induction
by Thomas Sackville
The wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybar'd the treen,
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierc'd the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.
The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue;
......
Xx
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each ?--
I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirit so far off
From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief,--
......
Dejection: An Ode
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms ;
And I fear, I fear, My Master dear !
We shall have a deadly storm.
Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
--------------------------------------- ------------------------------------
I
......
Weight Below
by We'll Get to that
...
...
Like Titanic's anchor dragging me low,
Deep into Silence, where no words can go.
Like a police tracker, bound to my bone,
No freedom for me—I’m trapped and alone.
The clocks keep ticking, yet still I stand,
......
My Murder Confession
by Melvyn Kairupan
In a haze, I stumble,
tripping over my own feet,
dragging my breath through a hill drowned in fog.
Cold. Fucking cold.
Solitude chewing through my skin,
biting into my bones.
And then—
you.
......
Heart drenched in insanity
by Fathima Valliyangal
You know what, Sherlock?
Love? That’s pathetic
His arms were drenched in her cologne,
the other day,
the smile so nefarious,
conniving yet innocent.
I gave him my heart, you know?
I gave him elusive veins and Sherlock,
what do I get? I am deceived,
as though my eyes are blinded
......
Unforgiving past
by Fathima Valliyangal
Night, a solaceful, distant memory
When you left my already-rifted heart
It repeats, this haunting memory,
I try, alright?
I try to forget, I try to move on.
But this memory, it just has to,
repeat itself, over time again,
and I am, but a slave of the past.
The last time you said ‘Goodbye’,
......
For Achilles
by ash m
Prideful Achilles. Now sorrowful Achilles. Achilles
whose handsome countenance now defiled
with dust he caught and poured over his face. Mighty Achilles
laying in dust, tearing at his hair -
mightily in his might.
Achilles, worth an entire army,
grieving in his proud heart, now having the need of another
to hold his hand lest he cut his throat with iron - Achilles who
now cried, so terribly aloud, she, from the depths of the sea,
......
