Poetry on Living and Dying

Found and Collected by a Palliative Physician

[palliativepoetry]

All the world's a stage

By William Shakespeare

(from As You Like It, spoken by Jaques)

                                      All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

[palliativepoetry]

I hope death is like

being carried to your bedroom

when you were a child

& fell asleep on the couch

during a family party.

I hope you can hear the laughter

from the next room

[weetziebat]

there once was a lady

there once was a lady who swallowed a fly—

because she couldn’t close her mouth as she died

[weetziebat]

Memory

once upon a time you were able to take your picture-perfect memory; tell me off when I moved even the lipstick on your dresser. now, you can’t even see the glasses hanging off the edge of your nose and you have misplaced all of your contacts.

[palliativepoetry]

I missed you quietly today. So quietly that no one noticed.

I missed you as I climbed out of bed and as I brushed my teeth; when I waited at the lights on the drive into work and as I heard the rain outside my window.

I missed you as I ordered lunch and as I kicked off my shoes when I got home; as I switched off the lights and climbed into bed for the night.

I missed you without tears or noise or fanfare.

But oh how I felt it.

I felt it in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening and at night. I felt it as I woke, as I waited, as I worked. I felt it at home, on the road, in the light, in the dark, in the rain.

I felt it in every one of those moments, each one sitting heavier and heavier as the weight of me missing you kept growing and growing.

Yes, I missed you so quietly today.

But I felt it so loudly.

-Becky Hemsley

[palliativepoetry]

A Pretty Song by Mary Oliver

From the complications of loving you I think there is no end or return. No answer, no coming out of it. Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?

This isn’t a play ground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. Therefore I have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods

that hold you in the center of my world. And I say to my body: grow thinner still. And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. And I say to my heart: rave on.

[palliativepoetry]

[palliativepoetry]

From “We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing” by Dr. Jillian Horton

[palliativepoetry]

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[palliativepoetry]

The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

[palliativepoetry]

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

[palliativepoetry]

Some Clouds by Steve Kowit

Now that I’ve unplugged the phone no one can reach me— At least for this one afternoon they will have to get by without my advice or opinion. Now nobody else is going to call & ask in a tentative voice if I haven’t yet heard that she’s dead, that woman I once loved— nothing but ashes scattered over a city that barely itself any longer exists. Yes, thank you, I’ve heard. It had been too lovely a morning. That in itself should have warned me. The sun lit up the tangerines & the blazing poinsettias like so many candles. For one afternoon they will have to forgive me. I am busy watching things happen again that happened a long time ago, as I lean back in Josephine’s lawn chair under a sky of incredible blue, broken—if that is the word for it— by a few billowing clouds, all white & unspeakably lovely, drifting out of one nothingness into another.

[palliativepoetry]

The Mango by LC

There is a method to the

cutting of the Mango—

first, slice it twice down to the core

just grazing the hard seed at the centre;

second, cut a checkerboard before you

invert the soft, sweet flesh that is currently

exposed and ripe for the eating.

Next, you place it in front of your child

who is sprouting up before your eyes more

quickly and more slowly than you could care for.

She takes it between her fingers and

a light comes on as she learns to gnash

it between her gums. Satisfied,

she leaves a sticky mess behind.

And tomorrow, you take the mango to the lips

of your mother who is falling asleep but

rouses as she smells the familiar scent

of her country. Delicately, tremulously

she takes it in with the tip of her tongue, bite

by bite, bravely swallowing the fruit, and for a

moment you think she remembers something—

anything—all the while the dysphagia

is just another sign of the unlearning of

a lifetime of things that she wanted to forget.

[palliativepoetry]

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[rickladd]

How to Die Well, According to a Palliative Care Doctor

How to Die Well, According to a Palliative Care Doctor

Came across this wonderful, reasonably short article about death and dying, a subject I have long been interested in; especially as I’m winding down my 75th year here. Preparing for death by making peace with it. Excerpt: First, you withdraw. Life shrinks down to the size of your home, then to your bedroom, then to your bed—sometimes over months, but more often over weeks. Old joys stop having…

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[palliativepoetry]

HURRY by Marie Howe

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store

and the gas station and the green market and

Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,

as she runs along two or three steps behind me

her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?

To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?

Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,

Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—

you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking

back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,

hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

[palliativepoetry]

the definition of a miracle by LC

mir·a·cle /ˈmirək(ə)l/ noun. · a highly improbable but surprising event · a rare event · a once-in-a-million event that is orchestrated beyond our scientific understanding · an act of God. it is · the story of the man whose cancer cells are completely wiped clean on the follow-up CT scan · the woman who holds on until the very second that her family is reunited to breathe her last breath · the Lazaranian man who is re-routed from hospice to exchange his liver for a new one; this man who came back from the dead