Poems

Chapter 77: Lament

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About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical poems that move between expansive meditations and concentrated sonnets, exploring awe, longing, and the burdens of compassion. Recurring subjects include nature, seasonal change, mortality, and desire, with vivid images of orchards, sea, and city life anchoring philosophical reflection. The volume alternates long narrative-lyric pieces with brief, tightly crafted songs and sonnets, shifting from exuberant, declarative lines to quiet elegiac tones. Organized in sections that vary in mood and form, the work emphasizes emotional immediacy, formal variety, and an attentive speaker negotiating self, other, and the natural world.

Lament

Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I’ll make you little jackets;
I’ll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There’ll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.