Consolatio

Lattimore: I hate death. I hate all who speak well of it.

 
Witness to Death

Disconsolate I
from the thinning line
have seen friends drop and die.
All I called mine
has gone or will go
from its place in the sun.
This we know,
and nothing can be done.

Villon, Nashe, Dunbar,
to  your great testaments
I too assent from afar,
bestow my violence,
and throw my rhyme
and rage in the feeding face
of the great pig of time--
Beauty gone from her place,

wit wasted and lost,
promise killed with blight,
McCarter and George Frost.
Dilys who was delight,
Gilly suddenly gone,
Cartwright killed in the air,
Forrester, Conklin undone
in their prime. Where, where

is the rose, and the great
heart, and the shine of wit?
I hate death. I hate
all who speak well of it.
Dunbar, Nashe, Villon,
we sang as best we could
for the sake of those who are gone,
and it does no good.

  --Richmond Lattimore (1906-1984). Poem published in The Voice That Is Great Within Us, ed. Hayden Carruth (1970)

Borges: There is a mirror that has seen me the last time

Limits

There is a line of Verlaine that I will not be able to remember.
There is a street nearby that is widowed of my footsteps,
there is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
there is a door that I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books of my library (I am looking at them)
there is one that I will never open now.
This summer I will be fifty years old;
Death is wearing me away, relentless.

  --Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) wrote another version of this poem, but I prefer this one.

Límites
Hay una línea de Verlaine que no volveré a recordar.
Hay una calle próxima que está vedada a mis pasos,
hay un espejo que me ha visto por última vez,
hay una puerta que he cerrado hasta el fin del mundo.
Entre los libros de mi biblioteca (estoy viéndolos)
hay alguno que ya nunca abriré.
Este verano cumpliré cincuenta años;
La muerte me desgasta, incesante.

Matthew Arnold: The vasty hall of Death

Requiescat

Strew on her roses, roses,
and never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.

Her mirth the world required:
she bathed it in smiles of  glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
and now they let her be.

Her life was turning, turning,
in mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
and now peace laps her round.

Her cabined, ample Spirit,
it fluttered and failed for breath.
Tonight it doth inherit
the vasty hall of Death.

     --Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), in The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840-1866, published 1908.

Our family chain is broken

Our family chain is broken, and nothing seems the same;
but as God calls us one by one the chain will link again.

              --Ron Tranmer 

The poem is copyrighted. Please see the author's website (name is linked).

The author of the poem writes: 

I am the author of the above, "Our Family Chain Is Broken." Here is the full poem: 

We little knew the day that God
was going to call your name.
In life we loved you dearly,
in death we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you.
You did not go alone,
For part of us went with you
The day God called you home.

You left us peaceful memories.
Your love is still our guide,
And though we cannot see you
You are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken
and nothing seems the same,
but as God calls us one by one
the chain will link again.

I wrote it for a young woman in our family several years ago. Copies were passed out among the family. I hope it can bring comfort to others who grieve.

--Ron Tranmer

When something terrible happens, you discover a new set of relatives

 

It's a sort of kinship, is all I can say, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of a sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.

       --[From Sedulia: I am not sure this attribution is correct. Please help if you can]-- Joan Wickersham (1957-), in The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order (pub. 2008)