Death and Dying
[ Novel for this unit is Bang the Drum Slowly ]
Jay Parini
Skater in Blue
The lid broke, and suddenly the child
in all her innocence was underneath
the ice in zero water , growing wild
with numbness and fear. The child fell
so gently through the ice that none could tell
at first that she was gone. They skated on
without the backward looks that might have saved
her when she slipped, feet first, beneath the glaze.
She saw the sun distorted by the haze
of river ice, a splay of light, a lost
imperfect kingdom. Fallen out of sight,
she found a blue and simple, solid night.
It never came to her that no one knew
how far from them she’d fallen or how blue
her world had grown so quickly, at such cost.
Richard Armour
One Down
Weight distributed,
Free from strain,
Divot replaced,
Familiar terrain,
Straight left arm,
Unmoving headHere lies the golfer,
Cold and dead.
Tom Meschery
The Last Poem
When
the game has ended
and the roar of the crowd
has faded into the past
and only the cleaning brooms
click-clack echoes
on the empty seats
drumming through
the dim-lit concrete corridors
of the stadium what
then?
Louise Gluck
The Racer’s Widow
The elements have merged into solicitude.
Spasms of violets rise above the mud
And weed, and soon the birds and ancients
Will be starting to arrive, bereaving points
South. But never mind. It is not painful to discuss
His death. I have been primed for this –
For separation – for so long. But still his face assaults
Me; I can hear that car careen again, the crowd coagulate
on asphalt
In my sleep. And watching him, I feel my legs like snow
That finally let him go
As he lies draining there. And see
How even he did not get to keep that lovely body.
A. E. Housman
Is My Team Ploughing
“Is my team ploughing,
that I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
Aye, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.
“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”
Aye, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands to keep the goal.
“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As She lies down at Eve?”
Aye, she lies down lightly
She lies down not to weep:
Your girl is well contented
Be still, my lad, and sleep.
“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine;
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”
Yes lad, I lie easy
I lie as lads would choose:
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart
Never ask me whose.
A.E. Housman
To an Athlete Dying Young
The time you won the town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After the earth has stopped the ears;
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honour out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
and hold to the low lintel up
The still defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
A.E. Housman
Twice a Week the Winter Through
Twice a week the winter through
Here I stood to keep the goal:
Football then was fighting sorrow
For the young man’s soul.
Now in Maytime to the wicket
Out I march with bat and pad:
See the son of grief at cricket
Trying to be glad.
Try I will; no harm in trying:
Winder ‘tis how little mirth
Keep the bones of man from lying
On the bed of earth.
John Updike
“EX-BASKETBALL PLAYER”
Pearl Avenue runs past the high school lot,
bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth’s Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you’ll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.
Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps–
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One’s nostrils are two S’s and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all–more a football type.
One Flick played for the high school, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In ‘46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A country record, still, the ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.
He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench though.
Off work, he hangs around Mae’s Luncheonette.
Grease-grey and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Sips lemon cokes, and smokes those thin cigars;
Flick seldom speaks to Mae, just sits and nods
Beyond her face towards bright applauding tiers
Of Neco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.
Richard Eberhart
Ball Game
Caught off first, he leaped to run to second, but
Then struggled back to first.
He left first because of a natural desire
To leap, to get on with the game.
When you jerk to run to second
You do not necessarily think of a home run.
You want to go on. You want to get to the next stage,
The entire soul is bent on second base.
The fact is that the mind flashes
Faster in action than the muscles can move.
Dramatic! Off first, taut, heading for second,
In a split second, total realization,
Heading for first. Head first! Legs follow fast.
You struggle back to first with victor effort
As, even, after a life of effort and chill,
One flashes back to the safety of childhood,
To that strange place where one had first begun.