Example Funeral Poems

Patricia Bishop - Child with Liver Damage

I had "specialed" him,
Coming in when off duty
With the odd comic, a bar of chocolate.
He would lie with his eyes closed
But twitching a little
Like a snared rabbit.
His hands soft with disuse.
Even his hair slipped away
So each day we’d find
Brown threads on the pillow.
All this so long ago
I forget his name even.
In the end he could only sip
From a feeding spout.
When it happened
I told the parents.
She had an odd little hair
Skew-whiff over her forehead.
The knot of his tie
Too small, too tight,
Like their hands.
"Thank you nurse," they said,
As if I had told them the time.

Ron Butlin - The curtains were closed

The curtains were closed when I entered your room:
The day was shut out, the night was shut out
And you weren’t there.
I looked down at your face, your mouth and your eyes:
I tried to remember your mouth and your eyes.
The walls were as mist when mist disappears;
The door falling rain that no longer falls-
The corridor ran the length of the world
And you weren’t there.

Stephen Parr - Passing Place

Butter
Flies in mid
October,
Wasps full of sleep
Crawl
Over the burning quilt
Of leaves.
You’ve been dead
Two days.
Already a small spider
Has built his net
From rim
To handle
Of your white enamel
Shaving mug.

Jane Duran - Stillborn

This hurt has beat so long,
Turns up with the tide
Each month – memorial.
The midwife waits by the bed.
A hand rests on my belly,
Trails its design
With sympathy.
Who weeps with me?
I do not recognize
The long white hair.
Bygone a fire escape
A point of entry
A wedge.
The fire hand is austere
All night long
All labour long
Undoing.
I touch your foot
Before you go
Stepping blindly off
No toehold, no notches
To catch at
Nothing binding, nothing soft
Our child
Dropped down through time
Through the slats
Like a dime.
Here in my bed
I exchange coinage with the night.
The curtain whisks up – seagull edge,
Its white barely flaring.
The roof is smitten with rain
And the ends of stories.

Liz Houghton - Caustic Soda

The week the first baby died
My father visited –
Awkward and lost in the new house
With stains on the floor
That would not fade.
While I was crying in hospital
He was on his knees,
Not praying – scrubbing
With caustic soda and wire wool –
Heedless for hours
With no gloves on.
He hid his red and bleeding hands –
Said he hadn’t felt the pain.
I held them gently, scolding,
Not needing to say
That I’d learned how it feels
To love your child that way.

Douglas Dunn - Empty Wardrobes

I sat in a dress shop, trying to look
As dapper as a young ambassador
Or someone who’d impressed me in a book
A literary rake or movie star
Clothes are a way of exercising love.
False? A little. And did she like it? Yes.
Days, days, romantic as Rachmaninov
A ploy of style, and now not comfortless.
She walked out from the changing room in brown,
A pretty smock with its embroidered fruit;
Dress after dress, a lady like red gown.
In which she flounced, a smart career girls suit.
The dress she chose was green. She found it in
Our clothes filled cabin trunk. The pot-pourri
In muslin bags, was full of where and when.
I turn that scent like a memorial key.
But there’s that day in Paris, that I regret.
When I said no, franc-less and husbandly.
She browsed through hangers in the Lafayette,
And that comes back tonight, to trouble me.
Now there is grief the couturier, and grief
The needlewoman mourning with her hands,
And grief the scattered finery of life,
The clothes she gave as keepsakes to her friends.

Linda France - Mother’s Ruin

After that wedding, I breathed the sour smell
Of gin, you cradling the cold white bowl, light
ghosting frosted glass; Dad laughing as you groaned
over and over I want to die, just want to die.
Last month I heard you, from your bedroom, urge
Yourself Try, Try!. And then I found you,
Dressed, waiting on the sofa, gasping louder
And louder, your eyes wild, your lips turning blue.
What can I do but douse these images
In stiff gins, relish the mad crack of ice,
Lemon eyes, soothing savour of juniper?
No one to hear me crying Why, why? Why?

Michael Laskey - Life after Death

After he died he went on speaking
On the ansaphone: he’d apologize
For being out and ask us to leave
Our names and messages after the tone.
At first we couldn’t, we just hung up,
But steeled ourselves; it was her grief,
Her tape that she was perfectly free
Not to choose to erase in those early days.
At last though the voice did change to hers
And we were consoled, we found we could breathe
Our nonsense into her solemn machine
Once more and pictured her smiling, unwinding.
Later we raised it – macabre was the word
We used – and she laughed, told us the truth
Was tougher, more matter of fact than that:
Just knowing how to record herself.

Theodore Roethke - On the road to Woodlawn

I miss the polished brass, the powerful black horses,
The drivers creaking the seats of the baroque hearses,
The high-piled floral offerings with sentimental verses,
The carriage reeking with varnish and stale perfume.
I miss the pallbearers momentously taking their places,
The undertaker’s obsequious grimaces,
The craned necks, the mourners’ anonymous faces,
And the eyes, still vivid, looking up from a sunken room .

Andrew Darby - Draining Our Glasses

There was a curling of fingers unlike any other I had ever seen
As she held her glass and cried so powerfully
Her soft white throat tightened
And Reddened like a house
Builder carrying a hod
She had no idea I was watching
Her every action her cigarette
Smoking continually
And breathing her smoke so deep and exhaling
Watch every inch
Of grey smoke leave her lungs
An image
Of precision and tears
Her tongue sobbing out
All her memories punishing
Herself for not being able to tell him
For not knowing she had loved him
And I offered her nothing more than my shoulder

You Walk Beside me Every Day.

The days are long without you here, I've sat and cried a thousand tears,
that cruel fate did my life destroy and take away my lovely boy.
But you can wipe my tears away, you walk beside me every day.

The looming years that, more or less, just fill me with unhappiness,
are speckled with some happy times, when rainbows brighten up the skies.
I know you're never far away, you walk beside me every day.

There will be anniversaries and celebrations that you'll miss,
Oh, Adam, how we'll miss you then, your booming laugh, your cheeky grin.
But you'll be there, you'll find a way, you walk beside us every day.

Sometimes I dream that I'm awake and find it's all a big mistake,
That you are here, you're safe and well! with hugs and smiles and tales to tell!
And in my mind I hear you say, "I walk beside you, every day."

The road ahead is hard and steep, with hills to climb and furrows deep,
and life will never be as good as when you, here beside us, stood.
But we beleive that here you stay, you walk beside us every day.

At night you gently touch my cheek and memories are mine to keep,
of my sweet son, so deeply missed, since that first day your head I kissed.
Inside my heart forever stay and walk beside every day.

TRACY LAMONT.