dying is fine but death

by e.e. cummings

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural; perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life! the sin of Death

I Can Hear Music

by Jeff Barry

This is the way I only dreamed it could be
The way that it is when you are holding me
I never had a love of my own
Maybe that's why when we're all alone

I can hear music
I can hear music
Sounds of the city
Seem to disappear
I can hear music
Sweet, sweet music
Whenever you touch me
Whenever you're near

Loving you, it keeps me satisfied
And I can't explain the way I'm feeling inside
You look at me, we kiss and then
I close my eyes, and here it comes again

I can hear music
I can hear music
Sounds of the city
Seems to disappear
I can hear music
Sweet, sweet music
Whenever you touch me
Whenever you're near

Already Yesterday

by Steve Kilbey

It's already yesterday
We're off the calendar
I heard the sirens play
Just like an orchestra
Mechanical bird of prey
Sing for your emperor
Last broken flash of love
Still in the camera

We don't feel those locks and chains
We won't listen to the lizard part of our brains
Giving the orders
Another morning we'll be gone
I start the car for Ten Mile Beach
And maybe Avalon across the water

It's already yesterday
And nobody's answering
Disconnected, drift away
Nobody's questioning
Head silver, feet of clay
Who is surrendering?
They fall in our heyday
I am remembering

We can't feel those aches and pains
We won't listen to the voices in the city rain
Giving the orders
Another morning I'll be gone
I start the car for Violet Town
And then to Babylon, over the border

Elegy

by Dylan Thomas
Edited by Vernon Watkins

Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother's breast

Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,

I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. the rivers of the dead

Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,

I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,

Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.

The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.

Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the light of the lording sky
An old man is with me where I go

Walking in the meadows of his son's eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'

Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.

O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.

Until I die he will not leave my side.)

The Dry Salvages (Pt. III)

[Pt. II here]
by T.S. Eliot

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death"—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
                              O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                                   Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

[Pt. IV here]

The Song Is You

by Oscar Hammerstein II

I hear music when I look at you
A beautiful theme of every dream I ever knew
Down deep in my heart I hear it play
I feel it start, then it melts away

I hear music when I touch your hand
A beautiful melody from some enchanted land
Down deep in my heart, I hear it say
Is this the day?

I alone have heard this lovely strain
I alone have heard this glad refrain
Must it be forever inside of me?
Why can't I let it go?
Why can't I let you know?

Why can't I let you know
The song my heart would sing?
That beautiful rhapsody
Of love and youth and spring

The music is sweet
The words are true
The song is you

Tesla

by John Flansburgh

Tesla
Brought the X-ray photo to the world
Brought the AC power to the world

Here is a mind that can see across space
Here is a mind soaring free
Sound turns to light and light turns to waves
And waves turn to all things perceived
Maybe that knowledge would drive one insane
How can that knowledge be tamed?

Tesla
Ushered the radio wave into the world
Ushered the neon light into the world

The Hotel New Yorker, he's dead on the floor
The body of Nikola lies
With just his papers, no family to tell
Out of the windows birds fly
Under an X-ray of Mark Twain's skull
The plan for the death-ray's design

Tesla
Brought the radar detection to the world
Ushered remote control into the world
Ushered the bladeless turbine into the world
Ushered the neon light into the world