"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