"At Sunset"

While I was nosing around at the Grolier this weekend with my mom, I came across a poem called "How I Am" by Jason Shinder. I'd never heard of him before, so I did some reading (of course) and found out that he died in 2008 of cancer. He wrote in these journals before he died, journals he called “cancer diaries.” It seems remarkable to me that, even in the face of mortality, he was able to maintain a realistically optimistic perspective on life: “The hours are left for vanishing and also for joy and for blessing and gratitude.”

Here is a poem he wrote.         

* * * * *

“At Sunset”

Your death must be loved this much.

You have to know the grief—now.
Standing by the water’s edge,

looking down at the wave

touching you. You have to lie,
stiff, arms folded, on a heap of earth

and see how far the darkness

will take you. I mean it, this, now—
before the ghost the cold leaves

in your breath, rises;

before the toes are put together
inside the shoes. There it is—the goddamn

orange-going-into-rose descending

circle of beauty and time.
You have nothing to be sad about.

 

by Jason Shinder, from Stupid Hope (2009)