Pavlakian

"Christmas 1963"
Joseph Enzweiler

Because we wanted much that year
and had little. Because the winter phone
for days stayed silent that would call
our father back to work, and he
kept silent too with our mother,
fearfully proud before us.

Because I was young that morning
in gray light untouched on the rug
and our gifts were so few, propped
along the furniture, for a second
my heart fell, then saw how large
they made the spaces between them

to take the place of less. Because
the curtained sun rose brightly
on our discarded paper and the things
themselves, these forty years,
have grown too small to see, the emptiness
measured out remains the gift,

fills the whole room now, that whole year
out across the snowy lawn. Because
a drop of shame burned quietly
in the province of love. Because
we had little that year
and were given much.

---

Merry Christmas.

"little tree"
E. E. Cummings

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

"Making the Best of the Holidays"
James Tate

Justine called on Christmas day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, "We're
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you're
still alive." She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone rang again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
"Sleep it off, Hugh," I said, "I can barely under-
stand you, you're slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas." The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. "I hate you," she said. "You're the most
disgusting human being on the planet." "You're
absolutely right," I said, "and I've always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie."
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. "Who was it?" I
asked. "It was my mother," she said. "And what
did she say?" I asked. "She said she wasn't my
mother," she said.

"Without"
Donald Hall

He hovered beside Jane's bed,
solicitous: "What can I do?"
It must have been unbearable
while she suffered her private hurts
to see his worried face
looming above her, always anxious to do
something when there was
exactly nothing to do. Inside him,
some four-year-old
understood that if he was good -- thoughtful,
considerate, beyond
reproach, perfect -- she would not leave him.

"Sonnet XCIV"
Pablo Neruda

If I die, survive me with such a pure force
you make the pallor and the coldness rage;
flash your indelible eyes from south to south,
from sun to sun, till your mouth sings like a guitar.

I don’t want your laugh or your footsteps to waver;
I don’t want my legacy of happiness to die;
don’t call to my breast: I’m not there.
Live in my absence as in a house.

Absence is such a large house
that you’ll walk through the walls,
hang pictures in sheer air.

Absence is such a transparent house
that even being dead I will see you there,
and if you suffer, Love, I’ll die a second time.

in the original Spanish

Si muero sobrevíveme con tanta fuerza pura
que despiertes la furia del pálido y del frío,
de sur a sur levanta tus ojos indelebles,
de sol a sol que suene tu boca de guitarra.
No quiero que vacilen tu risa ni tus pasos,
no quiero que se muera mi herencia de alegría,
no llames a mi pecho, estoy ausente.
Vive en mi ausencia como en una casa.
Es una casa tan grande la ausencia
que pasarás en ella a través de los muros
y colgarás los cuadros en el aire.
Es una casa tan transparente la ausencia
que yo sin vida te veré vivir
y si sufres, mi amor, me moriré otra vez.

"The Shortest Day"
Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

---

I am working on a project for my grandmother and am in search of poetry relating to grief, continuing with life after a spouse's death, Alzheimer's/loss of memory, loneliness, love, heaven, et cetera. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, I would love any help you could give me with poetry relating to those topics. If I've posted the poem before that's fine, since there are 700+ poems and I can't recall every one. Thank you so much.

"Track Conditions"
Eireann Corrigan

After you decide again that every fortune
unfurled from a cookie means me and I decide
that every song on the jukebox means you,
I travel from college to see you in your first
new apartment. Save thirty dollars taking the train
first from the city to Trenton, then from Trenton
to Philadelphia. Four hours to shuttle eighty miles.
And somewhere on the way out of Jersey,
that first train trembles and slides into a long,
screaming skid. Lights falter off and the bags
On the overhead racks hit the floor. The man
across from me surrenders his handkerchief
to the woman behind him with the nosebleed
and the mother in front of me unbuckles her baby
from his stroller to take him in her arms and
Mr. Handkerchief says That's not safe--
Leave the kid in the carriage. And she says Who
do you think you are? And we sit bickering in dark
panic until the man who collected our tickets
picks his way through the aisle. He has a flashlight
and calls us folks. He says Folks, please keep calm.
And I notice he calls the person we hit
an unfortunate soul. He says An unfortunate soul
stepped out on to the tracks and our brakeman
did not have enough warning to stop. For some
reason, I want to turn to that woman
with the nosebleed and say If the paramedics
had given up, then the boy I'm going to visit would count
as an unfortunate soul. But then the fluorescent lights
choke on and that ticket collector speaks again,
says Folks, a member of our crew is understandably
distraught. We'll just wait a few minutes for relief
to arrive from the next station. And I wonder
if the shaken brakeman will lower himself
into a passenger seat and ride, staring out the window.
Or maybe the jeep that delivers his replacement
will ferry him home. He'll sit with his head
across his wife's lap and bunch her skirt in his fists,
the way you have mine those nights you've said prayers
before unbuttoning my dress. Who do you think
I am? By the time we arrive in Trenton,
I've missed my connection, am already an hour and
a half late and when that train to Philadelphia staggers
to a stop, I already know the news the conductor will crackle
over the intercom, just like when the girl who told me
you'd pulled the trigger, when that same girl telephoned again
one year later, I knew she'd say something I didn't want
to know. Tonight, I sit on the second train as quietly as I sat
at Ben's funeral, worried that someone might recognize me
as the one common thread. Ben took me out the night
you held a gun to your head and fired. I knew he loved me
because he'd drive me to the hospital and sit in his car
while I sat by your bed. It takes more than an hour
for the police to arrive and clear the tracks ahead of our train.
It's a Friday night in May, warm enough to wait on the platform
without a jacket and two men in two states have stepped into
the brightening lights as decisively as you'd step off
a highrise. What are the statistical chances of all this?
This time the whole stoic crew stays on and the electricity
didn't even flicker. How can one death cause less of anything?
At first, when that girl called, all I could be was grateful
that she wasn't calling with news of you. Who could
forgive me for that? My father carried me out of my dorm
and that night, I dialed your telephone number at college
and said Daniel shot himself in the head. And you said
What? And I said Ben drove his car into a tree. And
when I told you it meant that there was something I
must have done to both of you, you asked Who do you think
you are? Right now i am dizzy -- I want to close my eyes
against you and bite the collar of your shirt. By the time
I arrive at the station, you've given up waiting on those benches.
I describe you at the window and the man there remembers
you perfectly. He tells me you had him call my name over
and over the loud speaker. He says He was so disappointed--
he thinks you changed your mind. It's almost midnight.
I can't tell you why the whole trip took seven hours
or you'll end up on your knees, weeping into me for
your own good fortune, for those men and their dismal
lack of miracles. So when the taxi finally delivers me
to your drive, you are angry but less angry
than you'll be later on in out lives, worried but less
worried then you have been before. Now I remember
how you held my face in your hands that night -- like
it was a face you had had stapled a sketch of on every
telephone pole across the city. And now, when we kneel, each
at our separate beds, we thank and pray for other things.
Who do we think we are? In my mind, the brakeman walks away
from the train into that darkened tunnel, his head
bent down, his cap in his hands.

"Untitled"
Stephanie Bolster

Come to the edge of the barn the property really begins there,
you see things defining themselves, the hoofprints left by sheep,
the slope of the roof, each feather against each feather on each goose.
You see the stake with the flap of orange plastic that marks

the beginning of real. I'm showing you this because
I'm sick of the way you clutch the darkness with your hands,
seek invisible fenceposts for guidance, accost spectres.
I'm coming with you because I fear you'll trip

over the string that marks the beginning, you'll lie across the border
and with that view--fields of intricately seeded grain and chiselled mountains,
the cold winds already lifting the hairs of your arm--you'll forget your feet,
numb in straw and indefinite cow dung, and be unable to rise, to walk farther.

My fingers weave so close between yours because I've been there
before, I know the relief of everything, how it eases the mind to learn
shapes it has not made, how it eases the feet to know the ground
will persist. See those two bowls of milk, just there,

on the other side of the property line, they're for the cats
that sometimes cross over and are seized by sudden thirst, they're
to wash your hands in. Lick each finger afterwards. That will be
your first taste, and my finger tracing your lips will be the second.

---

I've been told that the first line is "one of John Ashbery's "37 Haiku" in A Wave."

"1999"
Kevin A. González

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

"Untitled (In the slaughterhouse of love)"
Jalaluddin Rumi

In the slaughterhouse of love they kill only
the best, none of the weak or deformed.
Don't run away from this dying.
Whoever's not killed for love is dead meat.

Interpreted by Coleman Barks

"Ask Me"
William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

"A Bitterness"
Mary Oliver

I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness
and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger
and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never
play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your
bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last none the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of
the hillsides.