The Carol of the Dead

“T H E C L O S E S T things we have to angels now,” Robert Adamson said once of birds and why they might belong in a poem. Metaphors for the divinity of things. I quoted him today, when I read two small carols (two of nine) I’ve been reading through Advent. Today’s: “The Carol of the Dead” and “The Carol of the Living.” As a mark of respect to one of our great poets, I dedicated my reading to Adamson. And along with him, my mother, whom I had in mind when I wrote the carol. Adamson died last Friday; Heather died on 14 April.

Who knows what happens to us after death; the thought of oblivion (that of the one we miss, that of our own in time) is, as a friend wrote on hearing of Adamson’s passing, terrifying. Perhaps “the Word”, said to have been god and with god from the start, includes words like those Adamson wrote, and they go on. Let’s hope so. I admired his poems; I share his inordinate love of birds and the forms of the world. And who could not, eternity incarnate. Birds, the kind of language we could do with using more often ourselves.

The Carol of the Dead

 I don’t suppose that Paradise knows

    A hierarchy among the dead.

But if there were, each of us could name

    One we’d like back. Lost too soon and all

Their wisdom and their beauty wasted,

    And too little of both to go round.

Let’s live their lives on for them, then; make

    Each day an old song worthy of all

We still have to learn from their passing.  

 The Carol of the Living

 None of us will last, but something will:

    Let’s be that from now on. Let’s sing out

Our brief lives in the language of things.

    Let the forms that nature takes—even

These our organic selves—be our speech

    Again. Eternity incarnate—

Carol that, my friends, the way the wrens

    Do, choughs and pardalotes and tidal

Flats and desert oaks. Alleluia.