Poems of Sorrow and Grieving

REMEMBERING A PARENT

Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

oh antic God by Lucille Clifton
oh antic God
return to me  

The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meaghan O'Rourke
And did you still create me
And what was I like on the first day of my life

 

LOVE LOST

Ae Fond Kiss by Robert Burns 
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 
Ae fareweel, and then forever!

And Thou art Dead, as Young and Fair by Lord Byron
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;

Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:

Epigrams: Epitaph on Elizabeth, L.H. by Ben Jonson
Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.

DEATH OF A CHILD

An Arbor by Linda Gregerson
The world’s a world of trouble, your mother must
have told you
that. Poison leaks into the basements

The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad by Robert Herrick
Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses

The Dying Child by John Clare
He could not die when trees were green,
For he loved the time too well

GRIEVING THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

Buried at Springs by James Schuyler
There is a hornet in the room
and one of us will have to go

Elegy with a Chimneysweep Falling Inside It by Larry Levis
Those twenty-six letters filling the blackboard
Compose the dark

Facing It by Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.

REGRET & DEPRESSION

A Daughter of Eve by Christina Rossetti
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly

The Debt by Paul Laurence Dunbar
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,

“Come, come thou bleak December wind” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!