When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

---

This may have been the first Mary Oliver piece I feel in love with and quoted, for the line “I was a bride married to amazement”. It’s part of this sensibility that I want a fully lived life. I also think this line, “and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,” captures the utter interconnectedness and beautiful singularity of each person I meet. This is about not visiting but actually inhabiting one’s own life, and considered canon in mortality literature.

Oliver, When Death Comes. From New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1992)