Elegies, poems written in praise of the dead, are especially powerful in spiritual practice because they commemorate these cathartic opportunities by stirring up, then calming, our deepest pools of grief. In the process, we the still-living are reborn. We band together to pass through the trial of an important death, and we are changed. Elegies infuse this process with a palpable energy and, later on, remind us of where we were and how far we’ve come.
Elegies can really be about anything we care deeply about and lose: people we love, animals, a sacred place, a job, or team. The form provides closure. It’s a way of saying goodbye while celebrating who or what is gone.
In some sense, an elegy is also about the writer. It is an emotional acknowledgment on his or her part that all things are impermanent, which is itself a profound spiritual understanding.
The following poem was written by an anonymous soldier in Northern Ireland who foresaw his impending death.
Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there; I did not die.
Like many elegies, the poem transforms a natural lament over death into a birth, a celebration of immortality. In fact, mutability, the inevitability and power of change, is at the heart of a form that so deeply meditates on death. Everything dies, the poet begins, and I am staggeringly saddened by it. I miss my departed loved ones so much I don’t know how I can go on. So I sing to death, to the departed who are still somehow a part of me. In my song, if I am lucky, death blossoms, becoming another necessary, beautiful part of the experience of life itself. I celebrate the departed. I honor the times we had. I celebrate, and I pass it on, preserving history and helping those who come after me to better understand the rituals that define and deepen human existence. And that is poetry as spiritual practice.
Here is Robinson Jeffers’s elegy for Haig, a beloved pet.
The House Dog’s Grave
I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through
I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read—and I fear often grieving for me—
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dears, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided…
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.
(Haig, an English bulldog)
Elegy is all about closing the gap between the visible and the invisible worlds. Declarations of immortality alone are not enough. Our anonymous Irish poet compares himself to wind, snow, rain, grain, a morning’s sound, birds in flight, and stars. These are appropriate. We respond to each one emotionally, recognizing in them our own humble identification with the natural world and the mysterious powers that organize it. In an elegy we are intent on honoring someone dear to us, and we also aim to prepare for our own deaths, and for what comes after. The best elegies are heartbreaking and reassuring. They make us feel like weeping, and they make us feel like offering up a cheer.
In 1980, six weeks after my mother’s midsummer death, a vivid dream of my sister closest in age to me woke me up in the middle of the night. As far as I knew, my sister had not visited a dream of mine in years. I thought it odd but eventually drifted back to sleep. In the morning, my sister-in-law called to tell me that Beverly had committed suicide. About the time that I was waking from a dream, my sister half a continent away was taping the windows and doors shut in her garage while her four young children slept in the attached house. Then she climbed into her car and started the motor. She was not discovered until morning. She was thirty-six.
Nineteen eighty brought a summer of death to our family. In retrospect, it also brought us a lifetime of debate and evaluation. We found out soon enough what drove my sister to take her life, then we wondered how she could do such a thing with her own children sleeping nearby. In time, we all faced the challenge of reconciliation and forgiveness.
As a writer, I expected to meet the challenge through verse, but nothing came. For years, nothing came. Just when I thought I’d arrived at a place where I could forgive her, I would think of one or more of her children, of the difficulties they faced in their later lives, and I would be seized by anger. What right did she have, despite her woe, to wound her children? But then, what right did I have to judge her? Didn’t my faith teach me that my only responsibility was to love her? More than twenty years later, while doing my daily writing in my journal, I surprised myself by writing a poem to my sister at last. It occurred to me that her children would live to be older than she had ever been, that despite everything their lives had gone on. Before I fully understood the significance of what I was doing, I was writing a sonnet, but also an elegy of love and forgiveness.
Elegy in August
Sleep, little sister, far from pain.
Water smoothes out stones in the river
As memory calms the chaos
You left behind. Rest easy, sister,
Your babies are older than you ever were.
Even the stain will fade
When none are left to remember
The calls for help you never made.
After burning, blackberry bushes
Struggle up through ash, and love, resilient,
Blooms in all seasons, even for you
Who suffered and could not tell what was right
As you hurled yourself, suddenly
Spiraling upward to darkness or light.
Elegy helps us examine our lives and make sense of loss. It shows us how to sing about life and how to pray for everyone in it.
