rich, adrienne

"For the Dead"

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

rilke, rainer maria

"the dew is different, but the stars are still the stars of your nights. and isn’t the whole world yours? for how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. you felt in such complete harmony with god, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. you thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. for your love was equal to everything."

merwin, w.s.

"For A Coming Extinction"

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours

When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join your work to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important