I’m dying, God.
This has happened too.
Every death is an early death,
I know.
What’s more, this life you are taking
Isn’t bad. . .
No more said.
translated by Murat Nemet*Nejat
on dying
from Bring Roses and Cardamon by Horace
Whether we descend from the great houses,
Or drift unprotected under the naked
Sky, it’s all one; we are sacrifices
To death, not well known for compassion.
We are obliged and herded. The lot is
Inside the urn; the ball with our number
Will roll out. And what we’ll get
Is an everlasting absence from home.
translated by Robert Bly
Masses by Cesar Vallejo
. . .When the battle was over,
and the fighter was dead, a man came toward him
and said to him: “Do not die; I love you so!”
But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying.
. . .And two came near, and told him again and again:
“Do not leave us! Courage! Return to life!”
But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying.
. . .Twenty arrived, a hundred, a thousand, five hundred thousand,
shouting: “So much love, and it can do nothing against death!”
But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying.
. . .Millions of persons stood around him,
all speaking the same thing: “Stay here, brother!”
But the corpse, it was sad! went on dying.
. . .Then all the men of the earth
stood around him; the corpse looked at them sadly, deeply moved;
he sat up slowly,
put his arms around the first man; started to walk. . .
translated by Robert Bly
The Swan by Rainer Maria Rilke
This clumsy living that moves lumbering
as if in ropes through what is not done
reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks.
And to die, which is a letting go
of the ground we stand on and cling to every day,
is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown,
more like a king, composed, farther and farther on.
translated by Robert Bly
poem by Charles Reznikoff
Of course, we must die.
How else will the world be rid of
the old telephone numbers
we cannot forget.
The numbers
it would be foolish–
utterly useless—
to call.
Leonard Durso 