Hello,
my father is dying from Lou Gehrig's Disease, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and I am trying to put together a little book of poems that he can look to to for comfort, for inspiration, or just for an expression of how shitty his life must be right now.
For those of you who don't know ALS pretty much just shuts down your body one part at a time. Two Decembers ago he had a slight limp in his leg, and now, just over a year later, he is already in a wheelchair and unable to work. It is the saddest, cruelest disease I have ever witnessed or heard of. Shit, if he had cancer he at least would have a fighting chance with chemo.
Last month he admitted to us all that he was suicidal, and it has prompted me to try and encourage him to fight, even if it is in vain, because who knows, and also to give harsh God a big "f*** you, I won't give up."
Here are two examples of what I have so far, but my English experience is not as wide as I wish, so I am asking you all for good poems about living or dying, about the struggle of life, or even about the sadness of it, whatever might resound with him, please suggest it.
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
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.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
and the Robert Browning excerpt from Rabbi Ben Ezra
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale
What is he but a brute
Whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?