When Death Comes (Mary Oliver)

When death comes

like the hungry bear in Autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut,

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth

When it is over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Why Are Your Poems So Dark (Linda Pastan)

Isn't the moon dark too

most of the time?

And doesn't the white page 

seem unfinished

without the dark stain

of alphabets?

When God demanded light

he didn't banish darkness. 

Instead he invented

ebony and crows

and that small mole

on your left cheekbone. 

Or did you mean to ask,

"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.

Ask what it has witnessed.