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Join Date: Jan 2005
 
2008-10-21, 13:17

As I mentioned in another thread, my father recently passed. I'm trying to find a poem for his memorial folder. Typically, a poem or Bible verse is included which has some significance.

The issue is... My father wasn't a great one. Most poems are either about everlasting life, or how he's in a better place, and how great the deceased was and how much he'll be missed, or they're terrible depressing, talking about how death sucks.

I found what I thought was a good compromise: "Death by Water," from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

Quote:
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
                           A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                           Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
My family objects. They say it's too depressing. While I agree that it is not an upbeat poem... I'm having trouble finding anything better. I don't think it's appropriate to canonize him in death, but I don't want to use a poem about how terrible he was either.

That Eliot poem, to me, is saying, "The man is dead. His actions in life are being forgotten. He is dissolving into the ocean, as if he never existed. But those left behind should look to him, and recognize that he was once 'handsome and tall,' full of promise. You should learn from his life."

Obviously The Waste Land has many more layers than that, but I think that's a good enough interpretation for my uses.

Does anyone know of a poem with a similar message... Just different?

Thanks for your help.
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