The 11^th Anniversary of Ken Kronberg’s Death

My husband Ken died a little over 11 years ago, on April 11, 2007, a suicide three days after Easter, which was on April 8 that year. His death day was April 11, his birthday was April 18, and his funeral was April 19--all 11 years ago.

The poems reproduced here are to remember him--some from my standpoint, some from his. The mourning poems are obviously from my standpoint, the Shakespeare and Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts from Ken’s, and the John Donne poem a sort of Easter/Passover evocation.

 

Mourning Poems
When Ken was a little boy, one of the very first purchases he ever made for himself was a book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Dirge Without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

* * *

If you have seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, you may remember this poem from the funeral in that movie.

 

Funeral Blues
W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

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 for ever: 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 woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

* * *

The Sadness of Clothes
Emily Fragos

When someone dies, the clothes are so sad. They have outlived
their usefulness and cannot get warm and full.
You talk to the clothes and explain that he is not coming back

as when he showed up immaculately dressed in slacks and plaid
    jacket
and had that beautiful smile on and you’d talk.
You’d go to get something and come back and he’d be gone.

You explain death to the clothes like that dream.
You tell them how much you miss the spouse
and how much you miss the pet with its little winter sweater.

You tell the worn raincoat that if you talk about it,
you will finally let grief out. The ancients etched the words
for battle and victory onto their shields and then they went out

and fought to the last breath. Words have that kind of power
you remind the clothes that remain in the drawer, arms
    stubbornly
folded across the chest, or slung across the backs of chairs,

or hanging inside the dark closet. Do with us what you will,
they faintly sigh, as you close the door on them.
He is gone and no one can tell us where.

* * *

Song: “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
(from Cymbeline)

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The scepter, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan:
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renownèd be thy grave!

 

The Art of the Poet

This poem reflects on the Bruegel painting
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Musée des Beaux Arts
W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

* * *

Orpheus with His Lute
William Shakespeare
(from Henry VIII)

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

 

Sonnet 73
William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

 

And Finally
In this haunting poem of sin finally forgiven, John Donne plays on his own name (thou hast not done/Donne, thou hast done/Donne) in a way that recalls Shakespeare’s Sonnet 135, Whoever hath her wish thou hast thy Will.

 

A Hymn to God the Father
by John Donne (1572-1631)

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
      Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
      And do run still, though still I do deplore?
            When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
                  For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
      Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
      A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
            When thou hast done, thou hast not done
                  For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
      My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
      Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
            And, having done that, thou hast done;
                  I fear no more.