#poetry

At five in the afternoon. It was exactly five in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A frail of lime ready prepared at five in the afternoon. The rest was death, and death alone ↗

— Federico García Lorca

#death

My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. ↗

— Theodore Roethke

#death

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as the image of my father, whose life was spent like this, thinking of death, to the exclusion of other sensual matters, so in the end that life was easy to give up, since it contained nothing: even my mother's voice couldn't make him change or turn back as he believed that once you can't love another human being you have no place in the world. ↗

— Louise Glück

#life #love #poetry #change

Dying is a universe of its own.  ↗

— Arlene Ang

#death-and-dying #fallen #poetry #death

Here I'm here- the snow falling. ↗

— Kobayashi Issa

#nature #poetry #nature

The Trifler Death's the lover that I'd be taking; Wild and fickle and fierce is he. Small's his care if my heart be breaking- Gay young Death would have none of me. Hear them clack of my haste to greet him! No one other my mouth had kissed. I had dressed me in silk to meet him- False young Death would not hold the tryst. Slow's the blood that was quick and stormy, Smooth and cold is the bridal bed; I must wait till he whistles for me- Proud young Death would not turn his head. I must wait till my breast is wilted. I must wait till my back is bowed, I must rock in the corner, jilted- Death went galloping down the road. Gone's my heart with a trifling rover. Fine he was in the game he played- Kissed, and promised, and threw me over, And rode away with a prettier maid. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#poetry #death

Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#despair #life #philosophy #poetry #death

I don't know where I find the air and I keep getting the words wrong: From out our bourne of death and space the flood will wash me far- but it doesn't even matter. I never knew that words might not matter. ↗

— Ally Condie

#death

My mother's death changed the alchemy of food. Holidays run together now like ungrooved rivers. I forget what they are for. I buy bakery goods. They look dead under the blue lights. I don't do anything the way she taught me but I get fat. I don't look like her and I don't sound like her, but I stand like her. ↗

— Florence Weinberger

#mothers #poetry #change

On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam Well I have and in fact more than one and I'll tell you this too I wrote one against Algeria that nightmare and another against Korea and another against the one I was in and I don't remember how many against the three when I was a boy Abyssinia Spain and Harlan county and not one breath was restored to one shattered throat mans womans or childs not one not one but death went on and on never looking aside except now and then like a child with a furtive half-smile to make sure I was noticing. ↗

— Hayden Carruth

#poetry #war #death