Like dew drops on a lotus leaf, I vanish. – Shinsui
How do we want to be remembered? Do we even want to be remembered? Approaching that mysterious transition, many creative people over the centuries have taken the opportunity to make a final statement about the meaning of their lives and deaths, while others have produced epitaphs of their words.
Death poems (jisei) developed in the literary traditions of Japan in the 7th century. Later, energized by Zen Buddhism’s emphasis on the transiency and impermanence of the material world, the genre spread to China and Korea. Brief as they typically were, these poems considered the big questions, both in general and in terms of the author’s own life and imminent death.
They were traditionally composed by samurai warriors, nobleman and monks, often as final parting gifts to their disciples. The essential idea of the jisei was that in one’s final moments his reflection on death could be especially lucid and therefore an important observation about life.
Some are written as haiku, others in the 31 syllable (5-7-5-7-7) tanka format. Both forms seek to transcend rational thought and evoke a realization that counters our dualistic divisions between beauty and ugliness, life and death, future and present. Some jisei are dark while others are hopeful or even humorous. Many have images from nature. They each reflect what is on the mind during the last days or moments of the writer. Acceptance of the inevitability of death is one of the key elements:
Breathing in, breathing out, Moving forward, moving back, Living, dying, coming, going — Like two arrows meeting in flight, In the midst of nothingness Is the road that goes directly to my true home. – Gesshu Soko
Since time began the dead alone know peace. Life is but melting snow. – Nandai
I pondered Buddha’s teaching a full four and eighty years. The gates are all now locked about me. No one was ever here – Who then is he about to die, and why lament for nothing?
Farewell! The night is clear, the moon shines calmly, the wind in the pines is like a lyre’s song. With no ‘I’ and no other, who hears the sound? – Zoso Royo
What shall I become when this body is dead and gone? A tall, thick pine tree on the highest peak of Bongraesan, Evergreen alone when white snow covers the whole world.- Seong Sam-mun
As the sound of the drum calls for my life, I turn my head where the sun is about to set. There is no inn on the way to the underworld. At whose house shall I sleep tonight? - Jo Gwang-jo
Empty handed I entered the world. Barefoot I leave it. My coming, my going- Two simple happenings that got entangled. – Kozan
I shall not die, I shall not go anywhere, I’ll be here;
But don’t ask me anything; I shall not answer. - Ikkyu
Oh young folk — if you fear death, die now! Having died once you won’t die again. - Hakuin Ekaku
Riding this wooden upside-down horse,
I’m about to gallop through the void.
Would you seek to trace me?
Ha! Try catching the tempest in a net. - Kukoku
Inhale, exhale, Forward, back, Living, dying: Arrows, let flown each to each Meet midway and slice The void in aimless flight. Thus I return to the source. – Gesshu Soko
Frost on a summer day: all I leave behind is water that has washed my brush. - Shutei
Holding back the night with its increasing brilliance the summer moon. - Yoshitoshi
Not even for a moment do things stand still.
Witness color in the trees. - Seiju
Water veins stain rice fields different shades of green. – Seiju
From ancient times the saying comes: “There is no death, there is no life.”
Indeed, the skies are cloudless And the river waters clear. - Toshimoto
Before long I shall be a ghost But just now how they bite my flesh!
The winds of autumn. - Fuse Yajiro
My whole life long I’ve sharpened my sword And now, face to face with death I unsheathe it, and lo - The blade is broken - Alas! - Dairin Soto
Life is an ever-rolling wheel
And every day is the right one.
He who recites poems at his death
Adds frost to snow. - Mumon Gensen
Death poems are mere delusion – death is death. - Toko
I raise the mirror of my life up to my face: sixty years.
With a swing I smash the reflection – The world as usual all in its place. - Taigen Sofu
The fourth day of the new year;
What better day to leave this world! - Aki No-Bo
Although the autumn moon has set,
Its light lingers on my chest. - Kanshu
My old body: a drop of dew grown heavy at the leaf tip. - Kiba
I cast the brush aside – from here on
I’ll speak to the moon face to face. - Koha
I cleansed the mirror of my heart – now it reflects the moon. - Renseki
Time to go. They say the journey is a long one: change of robes. - Roshu
Boarding the boat I slip off my shoes: Moon in the water. - Seira
My seventy years – a withered pampas tail and all around it iris blooming. – Daibai
Autumn winds: having sworn to save all souls, I am at peace. - So’Oku
The moon leaks out from sleeves of cloud and scatters shadows. - Tanko
In the 20th century, some death poems commented on the “real” world of politics. When Yukio Mishima’s military coup failed, he left a final poem before committing ritual suicide:
A small night storm blows Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’ Preceding those who hesitate
In 1967, Buddhist nun Nhất Chi Mai wrote this before self-immolating in protest of the Vietnam War:
I pray I will be still and calm, I will kneel over, clasp my hands, sing the Buddha’s name.
The composition of traditional death poems demanded time and consideration, even input and criticism from others. But they were not necessarily without humor:
Bury me when I die beneath a wine barrel in a tavern. With luck the cask will leak. - Moriya Sen’an
People, when you see the smoke, do not think it’s fields they’re burning. - Baika
Many things befell me as I followed Buddha
Three and seventy years. What is death?
Freely, from my own true self: Ho, Ho! - Ensetsu
Cherry blossoms fall on a half-eaten dumpling. – Saruo
Moon in a barrel: You never know just when the bottom will fall out. - Mabutsu
Life is like a cloud of mist emerging from a mountain cave.
And death a floating moon in its celestial course.
If you think too much about the meaning they may have
You’ll be bound forever like an ass to a snake. - Mumon Gensen
Dimly for thirty years, faintly for thirty years –
Dimly and faintly for sixty years:
At my death I pass my feces and offer them to Brahma. - Ikkyu
Had I not known that I was dead already,
I would have mourned my loss of life. - Ota Dokan
My life was lunacy until this moonlit night. - Tokugen
The owner of the cherry blossoms
turns to compost for the trees. - Utsu
Till now I thought that death befell the untalented alone.
If those with talent, too, must die surely they make a better manure! - Kyoriku
Ninth-month moon: Of late, when I have said my prayer, I’ve meant it. - Kisei
Shakyamuni [Buddha] descended the mountain. I went up.
In my teaching, I guess I’ve always been something of a maverick.
And now I’m off to hell – yo, ho!
The inquisitiveness of men is pure folly. - Etsugen
Above the ground my flesh will feed the crows and kites, below the ground, the ants and cricket-moles. Why rob one to feed the other? - Chuang-tze
My, but this cake is delicious! -Taji
At the age of 96, Zen master Yamamoto decided that he had outlived his usefulness, stopped eating and prepared to die. His disciples argued, “If you die now [January] when it is so cold, everybody will be uncomfortable at your funeral and you will be an even greater nuisance, so please eat.” He resumed eating until warm weather came again and died shortly thereafter.
Narushima Chuhachiro started drafting death poems at the age of fifty lest he die unprepared. He sent one of his last poems to his teacher:
For eighty years and more, by the grace of my sovereign and my parents,
I have lived with a tranquil heart between the flowers and the moon.
The teacher’s response: “When you reach age ninety, correct the first line.”
Falling ill on a journey my dreams go wandering over withered fields. - Bashō
An unknown poet clearly familiar with Bashō wrote
Locked in my room my dream goes wandering over brothels.
The Hindu Yogi Zippruana said:
Now Zippruana is leaving, and you can cry as much as you want to.
(Following a series of earthquakes) The earth is hungry. Soon, it will get a fat morsel and then give rest. - Rumi
They say that I am dying, but I am not going away. Where could I go? I am here. - Ramana Maharshi
Part Two: The West
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? – 1 Corinthians 15:55
Yoel Hoffman, editor of Japanese Death Poems, observes that jisei poetry arose out of a culture of extreme conformism:
Death poems reveal that before death, the Japanese tend rather to break the restraints of politeness that hold them back during their lifetime. After a lifetime of fitting in, there’s an opportunity to go against the grain in one’s last moments, after which one can hardly be punished for unorthodoxy.
Angela Chen compares jisei and Western death poems. These differing traditions offer a glimpse into the clash of individualism versus collectivism and spontaneity versus control:
When the group takes precedence, as is the case in many East Asian cultures, its members spend much of their lives bending to the collective will and holding back their individual quirks and needs. Against this backdrop, death poems provide a break from conformity, a cherished opportunity to say what one really thinks.
Modern Western poets, on the other hand, favor
...spontaneous last words that serve as a final confirmation of your personal brand...In the West, the pull away from religion, coupled with the emphasis placed on individualism, provided both the freedom to perform our “authentic” selves and the responsibility to make sure those authentic selves were...never phony. Last words are a final chance to reinforce the unique personality the speaker has worked so hard to cultivate throughout his life.
Perhaps there are more similarities than differences. Here are some last words, epitaphs, comments on death and old age and final poems from a wide array of Western writers:
Aeschylus:
Aeschylus the Athenian, son of Euphorion, here lies, who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, and the long-haired Persian knows it well.
Virgil:
Mantua gave me birth, Calabria took me,
Now Naples holds me fast. I sang of pastures, farms, leaders.
St. Francis of Assisi:
And Death is our sister, we praise Thee for Death,
Who releases the soul to the light of Thy gaze;
And dying we cry with the last of our breath
Our thanks and our praise.
Shakespeare:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed heare.
Bleste be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones. (Epitaph)
Jonathan Swift:
Here lies Jonathan Swift, for many years Dean of this Cathedral,
where righteous indignation can tear his heart no longer.
Voltaire (asked by a priest to denounce Satan on his deathbed):
Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Benjamin Franklin:
The Body of B. Franklin, Printer; like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost;
For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and amended By the Author.
Antonio Machado
And on that last day when finally I embark on that ship that will never turn back, you’ll find me shirtless, travelling light almost naked like the children of the sea. – from Self Portrait
Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea. -- From Fern Hill
Seamus Heaney:
Walk on air against your better judgment. (Epitaph)
Noli timere (“Don’t be afraid” – texted to his wife shortly before his death)
William Butler Yeats:
No longer in Lethean foliage caught
begin the preparation for your death
And from the fortieth winter by that thought
Test every work of intellect or faith,
And everything that your own hands have wrought
And call those works extravagance of breath
That are not suited for such men as come
proud, open-eyed and laughing to the tomb. - From Vacillation
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix on Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows what he talks about,
And there’s a politician that has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true of war and war’s alarms,
But o that I were young again and held her in my arms. - from his final poem, Politics
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap it hands and sing and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress. - From Saling to Byzantium
And his epitaph, from Under Ben Bulben:
Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
Nikos Kazantzakis:
I hope for nothing.
I fear nothing.
I am free. (Epitaph)
Pablo Neruda:
And now I’m going behind
This page, but not disappearing.
I’ll dive into clear air
Like a swimmer in the sky,
And then get back to growing
Till one day I’m so small
That the wind will take me away
And I won’t know my own name
And I won’t be there when I wake.
Then I will sing in the silence. – from Autumn Testament
A train waits for me, a ship loaded with apples, an airplane, a plough, some thorns. Goodbye, harvested fruits of the water, farewell, imperially dressed shrimps, I will return, we will return to the unity now interrupted. I belong to the sand: I will return to the round sea and to its flora and to its fury: but for now – I’ll wander whistling through the streets. - from Farewell to the Offerings of the Sea
Ranier Maria Rilke:
No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond, no belittling of death, but only longing for what belongs to us and serving earth, lest we remain unused.
I don’t want the doctor’s death. I want to have my own freedom.
Rose, o pure contradiction, desire to be no one’s sleep beneath so many lids. (epitaph)
Mary Oliver:
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 to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world. - From When Death Comes
Here lies a Jew, a simple-one, who wrote in Yiddish for women and for the regular folk, was a writer of humor. His whole life he slaughtered ritual chickens together with the crowd, (he didn’t care too much for this world). The whole world does good, and he – oy vey – is in trouble. But exactly when the world is laughing, clapping and hitting their lap, he cries – only God knows this – in secret, so no one sees.
William Stafford:
If the sky lets go some day and I’m requested for such volunteering toward so clean a message, I’ll come. The world goes on and while friends touch down beside me, I too will come. - from November
Now – these few more words, and then I’m gone:
Tell everyone just to remember their names,
and remind others, later, when we find each other.
Tell the little ones to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped will be all right. - from A Message From the Wanderer
Raymond Carver:
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. - from Late Fragment
Rabindranath Tagore:
When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable. I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus I am blessed…
Thomas McGrath:
Down the small and crooked road
I walk straight toward my death.
How marvelous the moon sits on my shoulder!
The wind is laughing as I laugh.
It has been a long journey. And now, at the end of it,
Like a boat that broke free and drifted far down the river,
I come to rest on an unknown shore:
Half in, half out of the water.
Edgar Lee Masters:
Good friends, let’s to the fields... After a little walk, and by your pardon, I think I’ll sleep. There is no sweeter thing, Nor fate more blessed than to sleep. I am a dream out of a blessed sleep – Let’s walk, and hear the lark. (epitaph)
Stephen Dobyns:
Somewhere that shovel stands propped against a wall,
the patch of grass is freshly cut where that final hole will be dug.
Let’s march toward our grave scratching and farting,
our own raucous music of shouted good-byes.
Let’s make sure they bury us standing up. - from Uprising
Gerard Manley Hopkins:
I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life.
Oscar Wilde:
Either that wallpaper goes or I do.
James Hillman:
I am dying yet in fact, I could not be more engaged in living. One thing I’m learning is how impossible it is to lay out a border between so-called ‘living’ and ‘dying’.”
Eugene McCarthy:
“Broken things are powerful,” said Yeats,
But things about to break are stronger still.
The last shot from the brittle bow is the truest.
Albert Einstein:
I have been thinking the whole of my life that I would demystify the universe. But what has happened is just the contrary. The deeper I went into existence, the more the mystery deepened. I am dying full of wonder, I am dying in wonder.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers! These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.
Anonymous, from the Kuba People of Zaire:
When I die, don’t bury me under forest trees; I fear their thorns.
When I die, don’t bury me under forest trees; I fear their dripping water.
Bury me under the great shade trees of the market.
I want to hear the drums beating. I want to feel the dancers’ feet.
Woodie Guthrie:
My sweat can grease the engines That makes the whole thing run And the ruling class can kiss my ass ‘Cause I had a heap of fun
Jackie Gleason
And Away We Go!
Johann Sebastian Bach:
Don’t cry for me, for I go where music is born.
David Cassidy:
So much wasted time.
Frederic Chopin:
Play Mozart in memory of me, and I will hear you.
Gustav Mahler:
Mozart! Mozart!
Joe DiMaggio:
I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.
Roger Ebert:
I’ll see you at the movies.
Henry David Thoreau (upon being urged to make his peace with God):
I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Gertrude Stein:
What is the answer?...In that case, what is the question?
Leonardo Da Vinci:
I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.
Groucho Marx:
Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’ll do!
Patrick Leigh Fermor:
I have eaten the bread allocated to me...and some bread allocated for others!
Carl Jung:
Let’s have a really good red wine tonight.
Steve Jobs:
Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow!
Part Three: My obituary for Greg Kimura:
Greg called me “brother” – not because we socialized together, but because the time we spent together was in ritual space. There, everyone who could stand the heat, stay in the room and laugh or weep together was either a brother or a sister. We shared these spaces for five years in a weekly men’s group and for over ten years at men’s retreats, poetry salons and grief rituals. Greg is best known for his poem “Cargo”.
He was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” And he was full of joy. Does that sound strange? Another friend visited a West African village and asked a particular woman why, despite her extreme poverty, she seemed so happy. She responded, “Because I cry a lot.”
Greg was rock solid. At these rituals he could always be counted on to be one of the drummers. And that’s no simple or easy thing. It means to maintain the beat for up to two hours, to hold the container while others release their pent-up feelings in the sacred work of grief. It’s one of the countless ways in which Greg served the beauty and the terror of this world, even as he was dying of brain cancer.
Because of this, Greg’s humor was inseparable from both his pain and his compassion. His Caring Bridge website said, “Hi. I’m Greg and I’m dying. And so are you!” And his poetry. Perhaps his crazy insights came from his knowledge of Rumi, who wrote:
Listen, I would make this very plain
If someone were ready to hear what I have to tell:
Everybody in this world is dying.
Everybody is already in their death agony.
So listen to what anyone says as though it were
The last words of a dying father to his son.
Listen with that much compassion, and you’ll
Never feel jealousy or simple anger again.
People say everything that’s coming will come.
Understand this: It’s all here right now.
And me? I’ve been so woven into the mesh of my trivial errands
That only now do I begin to hear the mystery of dying everywhere.
Greg had done much difficult interior work, and so (depending on your point of view) he was a real Christian (he taught Sunday School), a real Buddhist and / or a real Pagan. Perhaps I’m idealizing here – the family knows far better than I – but it seemed that he achieved a profound sense of peace with his own death that gave him the ability to be in the moment. True to his Japanese heritage, he wrote what I think is his own jisei:
Resist the world’s numbness and your passion revive,
so when death comes to find you, let him find you alive.
He was lucky in those last nine months to be surrounded by so much love, appreciation and music. When we visited for the last time and I asked him “How are you doing?” he responded, without a trace of irony, Couldn’t be better!”
So finally he was a teacher, who left me with a spontaneous Zen koan that I’ll be working with for a long time. We recited some favorite poems together, including this one of his:
Sacred Wine
Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it like a sacred wine in a golden cup.
The wine may break you and if it does, let it.
To be human is to be broken,
and only from brokenness can one be healed.
The ancestors say: the world is full of pain,
and each is allotted a portion.
If you do not carry your share, then others are forced to carry it for you,
And the suffering you bring to the world is your sin,
But the suffering you bring to yourself will be your hell.
Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it there like a sacred wine in a golden cup.
But he interrupted me when we got to the third from the last line, changing it to:
…the suffering you bring to yourself will be your salvation.
