From Time To Time I Read Some Poetry

But, I confess, not often that by others. Not, I suppose, as often as I should but time is limited. What I read often depends on a citation in some review, maybe in The New York Review, one of the few such journals I see. In one not many months ago I ran not a reference to Louis MacNeice and  his Autumn Journal. Off went an e-mail order to Amazon. Yes it should be read. It stirred the following from me.

Death Without Cause

"...take it...on trust that living is

The only thing worth living and that dying

Had best be left to take care of itself in the end."

Louis MacNeiceˆ

Death just happens, it needs no cause. Being born

parents tried to explain by

displacing myth with analogies about bees,

flowers and, sometimes, birds

whose eggs needed seeds. But apparently

death needed no cause. 

One day your brother came to your school,

said "Father has died and

I'm taking you home."Home where the event

must have ben mentioned.

I don't remember. Someone may have cried

but I don't remember. There

must have been a funeral, I must have been there

since I was fourteen. I know

where he's buried: the name and date in stone.

I've stood there alone

and wondered why I don't know. Death just

happened, needed no cause —

at least I don't know it. You might ask why

I didn't ask. Perhaps I did.

It's the answer that's missing. How would I know

when I didn't know he'd been ill?

Back at school I do recall someone saying: "He

took 'it' remarkably well."

I didn't know what else to do. Dying took care

of itself in the end.