Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DEATH, by DOROTHY DREISBACH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DEATH, by                    
First Line: Death took the orange out of the sunshine
Last Line: The scar of the wound will always be there.
Subject(s): Cold; Death; Grief; Dead, The; Sorrow; Sadness


Death took the orange out of the sunshine
And wiped the smile away from the moon
She broke the wings of a white butterfly
And hid them away in a black papered room.

She choked the song of a wee brown eyed thrush
Laughed with delight when the world was at war
Seized all the perfume from pink ruffled roses
And bottled it up in an ugly gray jar.

She paralyzed the feet of dance fairies
Turned off the lights of an even tide west
Pulled all the feathers from petty vain peacocks
And stored them away in a blood rusty chest.

She twisted the smile of a happy young woman
Cut into shreds the spider's web-cloth
Stole all the dew gems away from the grasses
And wrapped them in silks devoured by the moths.

And on cold starless nights when the wind moans
Death, wrapped in her filthy blanket of gloom,
Mockingly fondles, tortures, and taunts
Each captive in that black papered room.

No fear has she of ill meaning rivals
Of robbery itself she has not a care,
For she knows if new life does release the prisoner
The scar of the wound will always be there.





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