Elegy

Here is another one that, like the occasional poem, is named more for its content than structure. While it’s likely to be read at a memorial service or after the death of a loved one or popular figure, anyone or anything could be memorialized. A pet? A lost crop? Democracy? The point is to acknowledge the loss, so the elegy is almost always serious, unless it is deliberately satirical.

Elegy for Jane    Theodore Roethke

            (My student, thrown by a horse)

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;

And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;

And how, once started into talk, the light syllables leaped for her.

And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,

Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.

The shade sang with her;

The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,

And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

 

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,

Even a father could not find her:

Scraping her cheek against straw,

Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,

Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.

The sides of wet stones cannot console me,

Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

 

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,

My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.

Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:

I, with no rights in this matter,

Neither father nor lover.

Poem An Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog   Oliver Goldsmith

Good people all, of every sort,

Give ear unto my song;

And if you find it wondrous short,

It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man

Of whom the world might say,

That still a godly race he ran—

Whene'er he went to pray.

 

A kind and gentle heart he had,

To comfort friends and foes;

The naked every day he clad—

When he put on his clothes.

 

And in that town a dog was found,

As many dogs there be,

Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,

And curs of low degree.

 

This dog and man at first were friends;

But when a pique began,

The dog, to gain some private ends,

Went mad, and bit the man.

 

Around from all the neighbouring streets

The wond'ring neighbours ran,

And swore the dog had lost its wits

To bite so good a man.

 

The wound it seemed both sore and sad

To every Christian eye;

And while they swore the dog was mad,

They swore the man would die.

 

But soon a wonder came to light

That showed the rogues they lied,—

The man recovered of the bite,

The dog it was that died!

 

Here is one I wrote for my friend Kevin Brooks, a storyteller and all around extraordinary guy.

 

Elegy for Kevin Brooks

 

Kevin Brooks has joined his friend Brother Blue

much sooner than he wanted to.

Brooks and Blue, highly educated,

as down to earth as any we knew.

 

Kevin Brooks baked bread, broke bread,

graced us all through heart and head,

communed through dance and story.

His earthly body is now dead.

 

Kevin Brooks, though now we’ll weep,

has given us his energy to keep.

The butterflies will have the same effect

because Kevin Brooks does not sleep.

 

He has dispersed, his life has ended.

He has transfigured, he has transcended.

Kevin Brooks is now gone.

Kevin Brooks is still here.