funeral poetry

Parta Quies

25 November 2010
Charles
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Categories: funeral music, funeral poetry

Oldie readers of this blog will know who I mean by Katharine Whitehorn. Journalist (Observer, mostly). Irreverent, no-nonsense, funny, nice. She’s now Saga magazine’s agony aunt.

I’ve just stumbled on the poem she wants to be read at her funeral. It’s by AE Housman and it’s called Parta Quies. I’d not come across it before.

Good-night; ensured release,

Imperishable peace,

Have these for yours,

While sea abides, and land,

And earth’s foundations stand,

And heaven endures.

 

When earth’s foundations flee,

Nor sky nor land nor sea

At all is found,

Content you, let them burn:

It is not your concern;

Sleep on, sleep sound.

 

What’s that shuckleuckle sound I hear? Ah, countless celebrants typing it into their funeral poem anthologies.

What music does Katharine Whitehorn want? I don’t know. But this is what she chose buying cialis online forum when she was on Desert Island Discs. (Note to US readers: this is the highest accolade that can be conferred upon a Brit. Forget lordships and sirdoms and damehoods, an invitation to appear on Desert Island Discs is the one that cuts the mustard.)

Follow Me – John Denver

Chopin’s grand waltz  – Brillante in A flat major, op.34 – Chopin

Je tire ma Révérence – Jean Sablon with Wal-Berg’s Orchestra. Composer Bastia

Part of Sibelius Finlandia

Every Time We Say Goodbye – Ella Fitzgerald

Slow movement of Bach’s Double Violin  Concerto

Slow movement of Mozart’s 3rd Violin Concerto

Impromptu No 4 in F Minor – Schubert

Her favourite: Bach’s Double Violin Concerto

It’s what she would have wanted

4 November 2010
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: Attitudes to death, death and funerals, End-of-life issues, funeral plans, funeral poetry

Here’s a new poem by Wendy Cope published in the current Spectator. I hope she’ll forgive the flagrant breach of copyright and see this instead as a promo. Its sentiments are very contemporary.

My Funeral

I hope I can trust you, friends, not to use our relationship

As an excuse for an unsolicited ego-trip.

I have seen enough of them at funerals and they make me cross.

At this one, though deceased, I aim to be the boss.

If you are asked to talk about me for five minutes, please do not go on for eight

There is a strict timetable at the crematorium and nobody wants to be late

If invited to read a poem, just read the bloody poem. If requested

To sing a song, just sing it, as suggested,

And don’t say anything. Though I will not be there,

Glancing pointedly at my watch and fixing the speaker with a malevolent stare,

Remember that this was how I always reacted

When I felt that anybody’s speech, sermon or poetry reading was becoming too protracted.

Yes, I was intolerant, and not always polite

And if there aren’t many people at my funeral, it will serve me right.

Shovel-and-shoulder work

21 October 2010
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: alternative funerals, Art and death, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, bereavement, ceremony, Children and funerals, DIY funeral, funeral customs, funeral directors, funeral poetry, Good books, green funeral, home funerals, natural burial, shroud

The words that follow are by Thomas Lynch, a hero to so many of us in the UK. (In the US there are those who reckon him paternalistic, but we don’t need to go into that. It’s complicated.)

Funerals are about the living and the dead — the talk and the traffic between them … in the face of mortality we need to stand and look, watch and wonder, listen and remember … This is what we do funerals for — not only to dispose of our dead, but to bear witness to their lives and times among us, to affirm the difference their living and dying makes among kin and community, and to provide a vehicle for the healthy expression of grief and faith, hope and wonder. The value of a funeral proceeds neither from how much we spend nor from how little. A death in the family is an existential event, not only or entirely a medical, emotional, religious or retail one.

“An act of sacred community theater,” Thomas Long calls the funeral — this “transporting” of the dead from this life to the next. “We move them to a further shore. Everyone has a part in this drama.” Long — theologian, writer, thinker and minister — speaks about the need for “a sacred text, sacred community and sacred space,” to process the deaths of “sacred persons.” The dead get to the grave or fire or tomb while the living get to the edge of a life they must learn to live without those loved ones. The transport is ritual, ceremonial, an amalgam of metaphor and reality, image and imagination, process and procession, text and scene set, script and silence, witness and participation — theater, “sacred theater,” indeed.

“Once you put a dead body in the room, you can talk about anything,” Alan Ball [creator of the HBO show Six Feet Under] wrote to me once in a note.

Source

On Going by Owen Sheers

30 June 2010
Charles
12 Comments
Categories: funeral poetry

It’s been a slow news day here at the GFG luxury penthouse suite in Thanatology Towers. So here’s a very good poem by Owen Sheers. If you like it, buy the collection. It’s called Skirrid Hill and it’s published by seren.

On Going

i. m. Jean Sheers

There were instruments, as there always are,

To measure, record and monitor,

windows into the soul’s temperature.

But you were disconnected from these.

and lay instead an ancient http://www.health-canada-pharmacy.com child,

fragile on your side,

your breath working at the skin of your cheek

like a blustery wind at a blind.

There was only one measurement

I needed anyway, which you gave,

triggered by the connection of my kiss

against your paper temple

and registered in the flicker of your open eyes,

in their half-second of recorded understanding

before they disengaged and you slipped back

into the sleep of their slow-closing.

Does poetry make nothing happen?

23 June 2010
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: funeral poetry

The Tide Recedes

The tide recedes, but leaves behind

Bright seashells on the sand.

The sun goes down, but gentle warmth

Still lingers on the land.

The music stops, and yet it lingers

On in sweet refrain.

For every joy that passes

Something beautiful remains.

MD Hughes

What do you think of that little poem? Are you prepared to make a qualitative judgement? Yes, you probably are. We are taught to be critical, to rank things, to understand that there is good writing, bad writing, genres of writing, writing for Them, writing for Us. By the age of 14 we were backseat-driving Shakespeare, for heavens’ sake. It’s become a habit. We are all snobs, and snobs are not nice people.

I’ve used that little poem a few times at the close of a funeral. It’s been a good fit for families who like that sort of thing. Empathy, I flatter myself, guided me to pick it for them. And already I sound as if I am talking down. I don’t mean to, I really don’t. Yet if you were to get me in an armlock I’d confess that it wouldn’t do for me. If you were to advance on me with an electric cattle prod I’d whimper that I think it somewhat sentimental and mawkish. My shameful secret is that I know the difference between poetry, verse and doggerel. Once learned, never unlearned.

I guess a lot of celebrants feel this way about stuff they read at funerals. Arguably it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t show. Celebrants are role-players, after all.

Or does it matter? Does it? When a celebrant recites a prayer she doesn’t believe a word of, does that matter? Or ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’, which she despises? Is this suspension of self? Or is it insincerity? I don’t know the answer to that. Do you?

Poetry at funerals tends to be, according to critical measurements, clichéd, corny or worse. So what? Isn’t the important thing that we like it? Why do we like it? We like it because at times of great grief poetry’s what we turn to. Why? It’s something very deepseated that makes us do this. And we don’t just read it, either, we write it. Look at the cards left at roadside shrines. We like it, dammit,  for its own sake.

We like poetry rich in sound-effects: rhyme, rhythm, assonance. We like poetry which paints pictures – what posh folk call ‘imagery’. We like poems we can easily understand at one hearing even though we are not at our cognitive best. The right poem is a good ride.

It goes to the heart. It enables emotional release—catharsis. We feel better for it. Does it change anything for good? Does it deepen insights? Can bad poetry work as effectively as good poetry? Can it lead us on, only to cheat us? Can it wear off quickly and leave a bad taste, a hangover, a void?

Poetry reaches the parts reason can’t get anywhere near. It is psychotropic. It is verbal MDMA. And interestingly enough, the therapeutic benefits of MDMA are attested in cases of post-traumatic stress and high anxiety in both terminal cancer sufferers and their partners. So you can see where I am going, can’t you? I won’t, because I think you don’t want me to. For today, that is. I’ll be back.

Here instead is a poem by David Harsent. It is called Elegy.

On the day of your death there were leaves drifting

Down to English lawns as season

Drifted into season, winter coming; rooks were pouring

Across the sky, thick as falling leaves and giving

Their hoarse Kyrie Eleison,

The best of the day now fading, you yourself fading

For no good reason, it seemed, for no good reason.

And in every part of the garden dark doors closing.

And what did you want?

8 February 2010
Charles
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Categories: ceremony, funeral poetry

There’s a sprightly piece about funerals in this week’s Spectator. Its content is not available free online, so I’ll transcribe the best bits and hope that I’m not infringing copyright but, rather, advertising the magazine.

It’s by James Delingpole.

If I’d written a film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion.

…

God I hate weddings. The only one I’ve really enjoyed was my own, because I got to decide on the food and the music and all the speeches were about me … It’s the trappedness I loathe and fear most … At least with funerals you don’t go with any high expectations of fun and frivolity – whereas at weddings you do, setting yourself up for almost inevitable disappointment. And there’s an unspoken assumption at weddings that, as a guest, you’re privileged to be there and should be grateful to have made it onto the invitation list, which puts pressure on you to be on your best behaviour. At a funeral, on the other hand, you’re thought to be putting yourself out slightly. The family are touched and appreciative that you’ve made the effort. Also there’s no best man, no sit-down food ordeal, you don’t have to bring a present, and if you do behave badly no one minds or even notices because everyone’s on one of those weird, faintly hysterical, ‘it’s what he would have wanted’ post-funeral highs.

Then there’s death. I don’t think nearly enough of us think nearly often enough about this and what it means … I think that we might all be inclined to live better, more fruitful lives. I thought of this as [the daughter of a man whose funeral he had attended] read out a homily attributed to RL Stevenson (though more likely to be a variant on something written in 1904 for a poetry competition by an American woman named Bessie Stanley). It goes: ‘That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it. Who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had…’ When spoken right next to the coffin containing the body of someone who’s course is run, those words have quite an impact.

On a similar note, this is the poem short story writer Raymond Carver had inscribed on his grave:

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

How to watch your brother die

13 July 2009
Charles
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Categories: funeral poetry, Grief


How To Watch Your Brother Die

For Carl Morse

When the call comes, be calm.

Say to your wife, “My brother is dying. I have to fly

to California.”

try not to be shocked that he already looks like

a cadaver.

Say to the young man sitting by your brother’s side,

“I’m his brother.”

Try not to be shocked when the young man says,

“I’m his lover. Thanks for coming.”

Listen to the doctor with a steel face on.

Sign the necessary forms.

Tell the doctor you will take care of everything.

Wonder why doctors are so remote.

Watch the lover’s eyes as they stare into

your brother’s eyes as they stare into

space.

Wonder what they see there.

Remember the time he was jealous and

opened your eyebrow with a sharp stick.

Forgive him out loud

even if he can’t

understand you.

Realize the scar will be

all that’s left of him.

Over coffee in the hospital cafeteria

say to the lover, “You’re an extremely good-looking

young man.”

Hear him say,

“I never thought I was good enough looking to

deserve your brother.”

Watch the tears well up in his eyes. Say,

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what it means to be

the lover of another man.”

Hear him say,

“Its just like a wife, only the commitment is

deeper because the odds against you are so much

greater.”

Say nothing, but

take his hand like a brother’s.

Drive to Mexico for unproven drugs that might

help him live longer.

Explain what they are to the border guard.

Fill with rage when he informs you,

“You can’t bring those across.”

Begin to grow loud.

Feel the lover’s hand on your arm

restraining you. See in the guard’s eye

how much a man can hate another man.

Say to the lover, “How can you stand it?”

Hear him say, “You get used to it.”

Think of one of your children getting used to

another man’s hatred.

Call your wife on the telephone. Tell her,

“He hasn’t much time.

I’ll be home soon.” Before you hang up say,

“How could anyone’s commitment be deeper than

a husband and a wife?” Hear her say,

“Please. I don’t want to know all the details.”

When he slips into an irrevocable coma,

hold his lover in your arms while he sobs,

no longer strong. Wonder how much longer

you will be able to be strong.

Feel how it feels to hold a man in your arms

whose arms are used to holding men.

Offer God anything to bring your brother back.

Know you have nothing God could possibly want.

Curse God, but do not

abandon Him.

Stare at the face of the funeral director

when he tells you he will not

embalm the body for fear of

contamination. Let him see in your eyes

how much a man can hate another man.

Stand beside a casket covered in flowers,

white flowers. Say,

“thank you for coming,” to each of seven hundred men

who file past in tears, some of them

holding hands. Know that your brother’s life

was not what you imagined. Overhear two

mourners say, “I wonder who’ll be next?” and

“I don’t care anymore,

as long as it isn’t you.”

Arrange to take an early flight home.

His lover will drive you to the airport.

When your flight is announced say,

awkwardly, “If I can do anything, please

let me know.” Do not flinch when he says,

“Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him

after he told you. He did.”

Stop and let it soak in. Say,

“He forgave me, or he knew himself?”

“Both,” the lover will say, not knowing what else

to do. Hold him like a brother while he

kisses you on the cheek. Think that

you haven’t been kissed by a man since

your father died. Think,

“This is no moment to be strong.”

Fly first class and drink Scotch. Stroke

your split eyebrow with a finger and

think of your brother alive. Smile

at the memory and think

how your children will feel in your arms

warm and friendly and without challenge.

By Michael Lassell