"Staring Out the Window Three Weeks after His Death" by Paul Durcan

On the last day of his life as he lay comatose in the hospital bed

I saw that his soul was a hare which was poised

In the long grass of his body, ears pricked.

It sprang toward me and halted and I wondered if it

Could hear me breathing

Or if it could smell my own fear, which was,

Could he but have known it, greater than his

For plainly he was a just and playful man

And just and playful men are as brave as they are rare.

Then his cancer-eroded body appeared to shudder

As if a gust of wind blew through the long grass

And the hare of his soul made a U-turn

And began bounding away from me

Until it disappeared from sight into a dark wood

And I thought -- that is the end of that,

I will not be seeing him again.

He died in front of me; no one else was in the room.

My eyes teemed with tears; I could not damp them down.

I stood up to walk around his bed

Only to catch sight again of the hare of his soul

Springing out of the wood into a beachy cove of sunlight

And I thought: Yes, that's how it is going to be from now on.

The hare of his soul always there, when I least expect it;

Popping up out of nowhere, sitting still.

Joan Miró

"Sonnet IX: There where the waves shatter" by Pablo Neruda

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks

the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,

and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,

to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,

magnetic transient whose death blooms

and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:

broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence,

while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,

collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,

galloping water, incessant sand,

we make the only permanent tenderness.

David James

"Rain" by Raymond Carver

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgiveable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

Vincent Van Gogh

"Food Chain" by Sherman Alexie

This is my will:

Bury me

In an anthill.

After one week

Of this feast,

Set the ants on fire.

Make me a funeral pyre.

Let my smoke rise

Into the eyes

Of those crows

On the telephone wire.

Startle those birds

Into flight

With my last words:

I loved my life.

Edvard Munch

"Sonnet 57: Being your slave, what should I do but tend" by William Shakespeare

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you.
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought,
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

Ferdinand Hodler

From "Cré na Cille" by Máirtín Ó Cadhain

Glen Masan:

White its stalks of tall wild garlic.

Uneasy was our sleep

Above the long-maned firth of Masan.

If you ever come, love, come discreetly.

Come to the door that makes no creaking.

If my father asks me who are your people,

I'll tell him you are the wind in the treetops.

trans. Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson in Graveyard Clay

William Trost Richards

"Nothing Will Die" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

When will the stream be aweary of flowing

Under my eye?

When will the wind be aweary of blowing

Over the sky?

When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?

When will the heart be aweary of beating?

And nature die?

Never, oh! never, nothing will die;

The stream flows,

The wind blows,

The cloud fleets,

The heart beats,

Nothing will die.

Nothing will die;

All things will change

Thro' eternity.

'Tis the world's winter;

Autumn and summer

Are gone long ago;

Earth is dry to the centre,

But spring, a new comer,

A spring rich and strange,

Shall make the winds blow

Round and round,

Thro' and thro',

Here and there,

Till the air

And the ground

Shall be fill'd with life anew.

The world was never made;

It will change, but it will not fade.

So let the wind range;

For even and morn

Ever will be

Thro' eternity.

Nothing was born;

Nothing will die;

All things will change.

Edward Gorey