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She told me
she was dying
said it was so sad
no words no poem
could express
how it felt
and of course
my mind conjured
words because that’s
what always happens
it's all I have
like when you say
try not to imagine
a pink elephant
and of course -
and then she said
if I could I’d come back
as a cat
and I’d lie around
all day and do nothing
because life is too hard
too sad
and cats don’t care
and as she spoke
my mind
was taken up
by a pink elephant
and what they say
about elephants
and writing a poem
no room there
for dying
or goodbye
or anything like
sadness.
Your poem evokes a deep feeling of sorrow. And the idea of trying not to think about the inevitable when it so large and looming that it is impossible not to think about it. In my search for a companion poem, I present you with a poem I wrote over two decades ago, which tries to confront the impossible struggle to deny death through poetry.
ReplyDeleteDeath Be Not Proud
This poem
is about a poem
about a poem.
All three poems
are about death.
A poet wrote a poem
about a poet
who wrote a poem
about death.
As I write this
I am currently alive,
as is the poet;
but the poet
that the poet
wrote about —
that poet is not alive;
he is dead.
All three poets
thought that
by writing a poem
about death
he could somehow
overcome death
(or at least his own death).
I think of William Shakespeare,
another poet,
so sure of his mortality
and of his immortality,
so long as men can breathe
or eyes can see.
And then of Woody Allen,
not a poet,
who said:
“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve it by not dying.”
I thought
by being once removed
from the poet
that was already once removed
I could somehow be
further removed
from death.
Like in a room
of mirrors
when the reflection
of the reflection
of the reflection
appears to be only a reflection.
O dear reader I wish it were true.
(But you too, but you too.)
The mirror within a mirror within a mirror image is so perfect, echoing a poem within a poem within a poem, but also the sense of looking backward (to Shakespeare) and seeing a kind of eternity in the image of a poet, a mythical figure become iconography, and by that immortal.
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