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10.09.08: Reading Guide

Aimee Nezhukumatathil discusses how Linda Pastan explores the theme of impending death in her poem "The Deathwatch Beetle."

The Deathwatch Beetle
BY Linda Pastan
1.
A cardinal hurls itself
at my window all morning long,
trying so hard to penetrate
its own reflection
I almost let it in myself,
though once I saw
another red bird, crazed
by the walls of a room,
spatter its feathers
all over the house.

2.
My whole childhood is coming apart,
the last stitches
about to be ripped out
with your death,
and I will be left—ridiculous,
to write
condolence letters
to myself.

3.
The deathwatch beetle
earned its name
not from its ugliness
or our terror
of insects
but simply because of the sound
it makes, ticking.

4.
When your spirit
perfects itself,
will it escape
out of a nostril,
or through the spiral
passage of an ear?
Or is it even now battering
against your thin skull, wild
to get through, blood brother
to this crimson bird?

Linda Pastan, “The Deathwatch Beetle” from The Imperfect Paradise (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988). Copyright © 1988 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted with the permission of the Jean V. Naggar Agency, Inc. on behalf of the author.

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