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​Fallon

 

 

 

 

 

A Dance With Death

 

 

 

“You die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time a bit later on when somebody says your name for the last time.”

Banksy

 

 

Claire Fallon

 

 

4th Period

 

 

Mr. Berleman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​The inevitability of death allows humanity to establish common ground on their fear of it. The concepts of mortality and its effect on the emotions is the central focus of many important literary works because there will always be an innumerable amount of questions about it. Unlike many other situations that define life, it is impossible for one to report back on what their personal experience was with dying, and that has consistently been a source of worry and unrest for multitudes of the Earth’s population. Along with mortality being interpreted as a physical loss of life, it also represents the certain death of ideas and sentiments. Nothing can last forever, and that includes the way that we as people feel. A plethora of renowned poets that span many different literary periods are equally perplexed and haunted by the realization that they will eventually be forgotten, as well as the incurable sadness that comes along with loving someone who is sure to die.

​In the cult-classic movie Donnie Darko, Roberta Sparrow said, “every living creature on Earth dies alone.” As morbid as that may seem, her assessment was correct. In a sense, everything that one person experiences is done entirely on their own, because no two perceptions of life will ever be the same. However, going to the grocery store on a Thursday evening doesn’t typically provoke an existential crisis, despite the fact that there are different views on it. Uncertainty is the source of much of the fear that countless poets have documented in their works. The Christian with the most unshakeable faith can be taught to question his or her belief when faced with the obstacle of death, that to this day no one has been able to conquer.  In her poem “Silence is all we dread,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “There's Ransom in a Voice —
/But Silence is Infinity./
Himself have not a face.” (Dickinson 8) Her interpretation on the struggle of mortality is that in the end there will be an infinite nothingness because no longer will one be able to take comfort in physical sensation, like that created by the sound of a voice. Dickinson’s interpretation, unlike many fellow poets of her time period, does not have a religious tone to it, which shows that she was not one who found solace in the promise of eternal life. The curse of having a large intellect like Dickinson is that one is often found wrapped up in a finite future, thereby causing them to become oblivious to the present. Dickinson’s poem reflects said affliction and successfully summarizes the constant discomfort created by not knowing. People with this sort of intelligence feel in control by keeping themselves grounded with problem solving, and the bane of their existence is not being able to come up with an answer. Their own mortality is constantly hanging over their heads, and therefore serves as a timeless topic represented repeatedly in notable poetry such as that of Emily Dickinson.

​Perhaps an even gloomier take on imminent death is shown through the description of how the remembrance of a person or idea is just as limited as their physical being. Fame can allow the memory of someone to last longer; we remember Joan of Arc, but we don’t know the names of the people that fought alongside her. However, even she will be forgotten after enough years have passed, when someone speaks her name the final time. In a way mortality contains an inherent gift because it cares no more or less about the person living in a penthouse in Manhattan than the woman on her fourth round of chemotherapy. Percy Bysshe Shelley captures this unfortunate truth in his poem titled “Ozymandias.” He says, “`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'/Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/ The lone and level sands stretch far away." (Shelley 5). Even a man so powerful as King Ozymandias is unknown to the speaker described in the previous lines, which goes to show that legacies created by a false sense of immortality will never last. Ideas become extinct as populations evolve. Mortality becomes increasingly relevant to those who are consumed by their desire to become etched into the minds of many, an impossible task that makes a full lifetime much shorter.Poetry like Shelley’s eloquently captures the fear of being forgotten, because a coffin doesn’t have room for pride or spite. Naturally, people approach this reality in opposing manners. Regret for a life spent full of fixation on death is often realized when it’s too late. In his poem “The Figure,” Joseph Fasano says, “You sit in a chair in the room. The wind lies/ open/ on your lap like the score of a life you did not/ measure.” (Fasano 12). Those who do not recognize that their quest for perpetual recognition is flawed do not come to terms with this idea, but again, they are no less affected by death than the apparently insignificant. Poetry such as this is a beautiful euphemism that tiptoes with flowing language around the parts of life that no one wants to confront.

People search for acceptance all the way into their graves, and death is the only thing that welcomes them unconditionally. The theme of mortality is a common one, and because of this, differing views on its meaning are expressed through the writing of a variety of poets. It will continue to be a source of melancholy entertainment until someone finds the answer. Poetry on this topic and its related counterparts brings the writer on the same level of the reader, because highly acclaimed words on a page mean nothing when it comes to death. The fact that this theme has been represented in every genre and time period shows that fear of life’s end will always be of unifying importance. 

 

 

“Ozymandias”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away".

 

(1818) 

 

 

“Sonnet 74”

William Shakespeare

 

But be contented when that fell arrest


Without all bail shall carry me away,


My life hath in this line some interest,


Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.


When thou reviewest this, thou dost review


The very part was consecrate to thee:


The earth can have but earth, which is his due;


My spirit is thine, the better part of me:


So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,


The prey of worms, my body being dead;


The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,


Too base of thee to be remembered.
   

The worth of that is that which it contains,
   

And that is this, and this with thee remains.

 

(1609)

 

 

 

“The Dying Christian to His Soul”

Alexander Pope

 

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!


Quit, O quit this mortal frame:


Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,


O the pain, the bliss of dying!


Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,


And let me languish into life.



 

Hark! they whisper; angels say,


Sister Spirit, come away!


What is this absorbs me quite?
S

teals my senses, shuts my sight,


Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?


Tell me, my soul, can this be death?



 

The world recedes; it disappears!


Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears


With sounds seraphic ring!


Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!


O Grave! where is thy victory?


O Death! where is thy sting?

 

(1712)

 

 

“Silence is all we dread.”

Emily Dickinson

 

Silence is all we dread.


There's Ransom in a Voice —


But Silence is Infinity.


Himself have not a face.

 

(1873)

 

 

“Suicide Off Egg Rock”

Sylvia Plath

 

Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled

On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats,

Gas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape

Of imperfections his bowels were part of-

Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught.

Sun struck the water like a damnation.

No pit of shadow to crawl into,

And his blood beating the old tattoo

I am, I am, I am. Children

Were squealing where combers broke and the spindrift

Raveled wind-ripped from the crest of the wave.

A mongrel working his legs to a gallop

Hustled a gull flock to flap off the sandspit.

 

He smoldered, as if stone-deaf, blindfold,

His body beached with the sea's garbage,

A machine to breathe and beat forever.

Flies filing in through a dead skate's eyehole

Buzzed and assailed the vaulted brainchamber.

The words in his book wormed off the pages.

Everything glittered like blank paper.

 

Everything shrank in the sun's corrosive

Ray but Egg Rock on the blue wastage.

He heard when he walked into the water

 

The forgetful surf creaming on those ledges.

 

(1960)

 

 

“dying is fine)but Death”

e e cummings

 

 

dying is fine)but Death

 

?o

baby

i

 

wouldn't like

 

Death if Death

were

good:for

 

when(instead of stopping to think)you

 

begin to feel of it,dying

's miraculous

why?be

 

cause dying is

 

perfectly natural;perfectly

putting

it mildly lively(but

 

Death

 

is strictly

scientific

& artificial &

 

evil & legal)

 

we thank thee

god

almighty for dying

(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

 

(1922-1958)*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*It is unclear the exact date of this original publication, but appears in at least one of his anthologies written in this time period.

 

“Funeral Blues”

W.H. Auden

 

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

 

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

(1938)

 

 

"The Figure"

Joseph Fasano

 

 

You sit at a window and listen to your father

crossing the dark grasses of the fields

 

toward you, a moon soaking through his shoes as he shuffles the wind

aside, the night in his hands like an empty bridle.

 

How long have we been this way, you ask him.

It must be ages, the wind answers. It must be the music of the wind

 

turning your fingers to glass, turning the furniture of childhood

to the colors of horses, turning them away.

 

Your father is still crossing the acres, a light on his tongue

like a small coin from an empire that has always been ruined.

 

Now the dark flocks are drifting through his shoulders

with an odor of lavender, an odor of gold. Now he has turned

 

as though to go, but only knelt down with the heavy oars

of October on his forearms, to begin the horrible rowing.

 

You sit in a chair in the room. The wind lies open

on your lap like the score of a life you did not measure.

 

You rise. You turn back to the room and repeat what you know:

The earth is not a home. The night is not an empty bridle

 

in the hands of a man crossing a field with a new moon

in his old wool. We abandon the dead. We abandon them.

 

(2013)

“This Is A Photograph of Me”

Margaret Atwood

 

 

It was taken some time ago.

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

 

then, as you scan

it, you see in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(balsam or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.

 

In the background there is a lake,

and beyond that, some low hills.

 

(The photograph was taken

the day after I drowned.

 

I am in the lake, in the center

of the picture, just under the surface.

 

It is difficult to say where

precisely, or to say

how large or small I am:

the effect of water

on light is a distortion

 

 

but if you look long enough,

eventually

you will be able to see me.)

 

(1998)

“There’s a certain Slant of light”

Emily Dickinson

 

 

There's a certain slant of light,

On winter afternoons,

That oppresses, like the weight

Of cathedral tunes.

 

Heavenly hurt it gives us;

We can find no scar,

But internal difference

Where the meanings are.

 

None may teach it anything,

'Tis the seal, despair,-

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the air.

 

When it comes, the landscape listens,

Shadows hold their breath;

When it goes, 't is like the distance

On the look of death.

 

(1861)

“The Last Leaf”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

I saw him once before,                                

As he passed by the door,

And again

The pavement stones resound,

As he totters o'er the ground

With his cane.

 

They say that in his prime,

Ere the pruning-knife of Time

Cut him down,

Not a better man was found

By the Crier on his round

Through the town.

 

But now he walks the streets,

And he looks at all he meets

Sad and wan,

And he shakes his feeble head,

That it seems as if he said,

"They are gone!"

 

The mossy marbles rest

On the lips that he has prest

In their bloom,

And the names he loved to hear

Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb.

 

(1831)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My grandmamma has said--

Poor old lady, she is dead

Long ago--

That he had a Roman nose,

And his cheek was like a rose

In the snow;

 

But now his nose is thin,

And it rests upon his chin

Like a staff,

And a crook is in his back,

And a melancholy crack

In his laugh.

 

I know it is a sin

For me to sit and grin

At him here;

But the old three-cornered hat,

And the breeches, and all that,

Are so queer!

 

And if I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree

In the spring,

Let them smile, as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough

Where I cling.

 

“Do not go gentle into that good night”

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.

 

(1952)