Holy Sonnets:
Death, be not Proud
First Publication: 1633
John Donne (1572-1631)

X.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

strength: her

i
Lost in the clouds of clothes she no
longer felt as herself
in, she had little to say when he approached.
Talk happened, as it was later reported.
A certain concession was made that seemed
critical then, but later with time
it faded. As all things fade. She looked
in the mirror, and it fell away from her,
all those things she had clung to so strongly.
She cried; no one had to tell her any longer
that it was hard to build things or to
break them. Later, when she tried to explain,
it didn't work. People went about their things without regard.
At first, this enraged her,
but soon enough, a sort of soft and large
feeling overcame her and she even came,
perhaps, to expect it. What else could she do?
So she gathered her clothes together, packed them in
large boxes, taped them away with duct tape.
It didn't seem like enough; nothing did.

ii
Because the distance to any ocean was the same,
she had little fear she would make it there. She'd
never seen the ocean, but she felt it
in her blood and in her dreams. She knew,
somehow, it spoke words from her childhood.
When she woke, she traveled that way,
under things she could not go over.
By later estimates, she was maybe halfway there,
but that's not important. The point is she
started the journey; a rumor persists that she
wasn't really headed to an ocean. That's why
it's important to understand how she felt
about the ocean. And at night,
the dreams still came. Ghosts still danced
the hallowed spaces of her mind.
A bird would fly even South at this time.
The scarf was red, she wanted to remember.
She tried to convince herself it mattered, because
it was supposed to. None of this kept
the dreams away. She heard music no one knew
in the wind, the oceans still somehow evading her
search; but by this time, she had forgotten. It
would be years before she thought again of water.


By Dennis Tyler, copyright 2001.

Reset the Day

Reset the day.
It was a mistake
that slipped through
one dreamy midnight.
This day was really meant
for morrows away,
with warning in advance,
a chance to steal the nerves
and bolster courage,
to seek companionship
and space and light;
for this day
were better left on call
to be summoned forth
in some dark moment
when time is twisted,
when hope is nil,
and even the gods despair.


By Shirley M. Rod, copyright 1990's.








Click on image for full-screen view.

Night, 1870, watercolor and gouache,
Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones,
1833-1898.




Scanned image courtesy of CGFA,
http://sunsite.dk/cgfa/

Paint Shop Pro frame courtesy of




Eternal flame courtesy of


911 Memorial graphic
created by Tracie Cleaver,
using Paint Shop Pro, 2001.