February 8: Without Words, Sharon Olds, "Death"

Sharon Olds wrote so beautifully of her father's death in her collection The Father..

I found myself taking her book off my shelf and reading it this evening.  It was a salve.  It said things I couldn't express.

Saint Marty is without words this evening.

Death

by:  Sharon Olds

Last night I saw James Cagney die
as Lon Chaney, he spelled out I love you
with his hands.  He eyes were wry, narrowed,
as if savoring a cigar and a brandy, he spelled out
Forgive me with that keen savoring look,
then his head feel to the side.  My father
was a reptile lifting its skull, his shoulders
rose up steadily, he was a lizard
approaching an insect,
his mouth was open as if he were pursued,
his hair sluicing back in motionless action.
When the hero dies, they draw away,
as if the dead need more space--
I was bent above my father as he curved up,
and when he died I wanted him to rise up
into me or me to climb down
into his body, we were like two baskets
ripped at the sides which could now be woven together.
He lay there, a child barely conceived
lying on the floor of heaven in a heap
with no one to go to.  He darkened, then,
as if the room were getting brighter,
the way the lights come up at the end and you
look around--surely this
is not the world--