Poetry About Losing A Friend Perfect for Grieving Times.
Poetry About Losing A Friend – When a friend or family member dies, often whether you practice a religion or not the power of words will help you grieve.
Of course, for what you are feeling, the Bible, the Quran, the Talmud, or any religious text you believe in may provide soothing and truthful words, but for those that do not belong to a church or other community, there are non-religious poems that may help to lose a loved one.
1. “But Not Forgotten”
I think, no matter where you stray,
That I shall go with you a way.
Though you may wander sweeter lands,
You will not soon forget my hands,
Nor yet the way I held my head,
Nor all the tremulous things I said.You still will see me,
small and whiteAnd smiling,
in the secret night,
And feel my arms about you
whenThe day comes fluttering back again.
I think, no matter where you be,
You’ll hold me in your memoryAnd keep my image,
there without me,By telling later loves about me.
2. “No. 101 (On His Brother’s Death)”
Byways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come,
That I may give the last gifts to the dead,
And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb:
Since she who now bestows and now deniesHath ta’en thee,
hapless brother, from mine eyes.But lo! these gifts,
the heirlooms of past years,
Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell;
Take them, all drenched with a brother’s tears,
And, brother,
for all time, hail and farewell!
3. “Change of Address”
You didn’t dieyou just changed shape
became invisibleto the naked eye
became this grief
it’s sharpnessmore real
than your presence was
before you were separateto meentire to yourself
now you area part of me
you are inside my self
I call youby your new name
‘Grief…Grief!’
although I still call you’Love.’by Dónall Dempsey
4. “The Scattering”
I cast you into the waters.Be lake, or random moon.
Be first light,lifting up its beggar’s cup.
I scatter your ashes.Be the gale teaching autumnto mend its ways,
or leopard so proud of his spotted coat.
Be the mentor of cherry trees.
I cast your dust far and wide,a sower broadcasting seed:Be wild rose or hellebore or all-heal.
Descend as a vein of silver,never to be seen,
deep in the lynx-eyed earth.
Rise as barn owl white as dusk;
dove or raven marvelling at his flight.
Know different delights.
5. “Epitaph on a Friend”
An honest man here lies at rest,
The friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age, and guide of youth:
Few hearts like his, with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d;
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none,
he made the best of this.
6. “Funeral Blues”
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin,
let the mourners come.Let aeroplanes circle moaning overheadScribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,My noon,
my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.The stars are not wanted now;
put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
7. “Darling”
You might forget the exact sound of her voice
Or how her face looked when sleeping.
You might forget the sound of her
quiet weepingCurled into the shape of a half moon,
When smaller than her self,
she seemed already to be leavingBefore she left,
when the blossom was on the treesAnd the sun was out,
and all seemed good in the world.I held her hand and sang a song from when I was a girl –
Heil Ya Ho Boys,
Let her go Boys And when I stopped singing she had slipped away,
Already a slip of a girl again,
skipping off,Her heart light, her face almost smiling.
And what I didn’t know or couldn’t see thenWas that she hadn’t really gone.
The dead don’t go till you do, loved ones.
The dead are still here holding our hands.by Jackie Kay
8. “Grief”
Trying to remember you is like carrying waterin
my hands a long distanceacross sand.
Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.To say your name was to be surrounded by feathers and silk;
now, reaching out,I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor’s floor.
I was dancing when Ilearned of your death;
may my feet be severed from my body.by Stephen Dobyns
9. “Cold”
It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands,
and when I rolled it along in the snow,
it grewtill I could sit on it,
looking back at the house,
where it was cold when I woke in my room,
the windowsblind with ice,
my breath undressing itself on the air.Cold, too, embracing the torso of snow
which I lifted upin my arms to build a snowman,
my toes, burning, coldin my winter boots;
my mother’s voice calling me infrom the cold.
And her hands were cold from peelingthen dipping potatoes into a bowl,
stopping to cupher daughter’s face,a kiss for both cold cheeks,
my cold nose.But nothing so cold as the February night
I opened the doorin the Chapel of Rest where my mother lay,
neither young, nor old,where my lips,
returning her kiss to her brow,
knew the meaning of cold.
10. “Time Does Not Bring Relief”
Time does not bring relief;
you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart,
and my old thoughts abide.There are a hundred places where I fear To go –
so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say,
‘There is no memory of him here!’
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
11. “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
they Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by,
crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.by Dylan Thomas
12. “Bustle In a House”
The bustle in a houseThe morning after death
Is solemnest of industriesEnacted upon earth.
The sweeping up the heartAnd putting love away
We shall not want to use againUntil eternity.
Poetry About Losing A Friend –It can be hard to know how to cope when a friend dies. Individuals will also show sympathy or submit a card for the loss of a family member.
But when you lose a mate, you won’t always get the same outpouring of support. It can be an experience that is very isolating.