Sherry Chandler » James Lee Chandler (June 15, 1915 - December 28, 2006)
James Lee Chandler (June 15, 1915 - December 28, 2006)
…And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people, and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps;
And here you are the mothers’ laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers;
Darker than the colorless beards of old men;
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death;
And if ever there was, it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward—nothing collapses;
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
—Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, part 6
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3 Comments
1. Terry replies at 31st December 2006, 6:10 pm :
I’m so sorry for your loss.
2. sherry replies at 1st January 2007, 7:53 am :
Thank you, Terry. My uncle James was 91 and had Alzheimer’s so his bodily death is a release. I honor his life and grieve for his loss, but he has been lost for a while.
I paid tribute to his life as best I could in a poem called “Walking Taft Highway,” which was published in the last issue of The Heartland Review and also at the Other Voices International site. It won the Joy Bale Boone Prize for 2006.
3. Terry replies at 1st January 2007, 8:36 pm :
What a beautiful tribute. He sounds like a man I would have been honored to know.
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