The Way of Death- Meditations on Nothing But Death

At first glance this poem is depressing I admit. I really hesitated to post it on my blog but it’s beautiful, Neruda has this incredible way with images. I feel like poetry is becoming a dead art. There are no famous poems that everyone talks about and it doesn’t seems like many people go to hear poetry read anymore. Poems aren't easy and mindless. Their very nature requires you to think, it takes a little hard work but it's worth it. So come an explore with me the mystery and excitement of this poem. One thing you'll have to accept from the beginning is that part of poetry is mystery. A poet will almost never give you a strict, hard and fast interpretation of what you're reading. You piece it together and see what you think it might mean.

Pause (this pause is intended to give us both time to re-read the poem included in my last blog)

Let’s tackle the first stanza:
There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

Ok, what is he trying to get at here? Cemeteries are lonely? Cemeteries are inanimate objects, how can they be lonely? But what if this lonely cemetery is a metaphor? What could it be a metaphor for? Look down at the third line- I think it could be a metaphor for the heart. Why is the heart a cemetery? I think the better question for this stanza is how does the heart become a cemetery? It moves in a tunnel of darkness, we die going into ourselves, we drown inside our own hearts, as though we are living falling out of our physical bodies and throwing ourselves into our souls/hearts. Neruda makes a case for the destructiveness of morbid introspection and selfishness.

Moving right along, stanzas number 2&3:

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.


Alright, I’m not sure what exactly he’s getting at in stanza 2 and he may just be saying things for effect but I love the two lines that say, “death is inside the bones, like a barking where there are no dogs.” What are these corpses? They could be experiences, or dead relationships, or people. But I think this stanza says a lot about the inevitability of death, it’s inside the bones, it calls to everyone. The next stanza begins with, “Sometimes I see alone”, if you think about how he started the poem, “There are cemeteries that are lonely”, it kinda makes you think that he might be trying to say something about the deadliness of being alone or lonely. Then he lists of all these people, pale people, women with dead hair, bakers covered in white flour, thoughtful young girls married to boring men – they are caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead. Calling them caskets is really interesting. The casket is a carrier, it carries something that is already dead. What could that dead thing that they’re carrying be, maybe their dead hearts? And these alone coffins or caskets they are filled with the sound of death as they move upstream, the sound of silence.
Stanzas 4&5:
Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

Stanza 4 has some beautiful imagery. Death arrives as the coffins move silently toward it. Death is empty, it barely makes a sound yet it can be heard like a whisper. Stanza 5, well I like it but I don’t know how to explain it. He may be likening death to damp green violets because the color of decay can be green. He may be comparing violets to death because these violets are at home in the earth and death is our only certainty in this life on earth. Perhaps because green is the color of life and as the world is all that is alive will be given over to death – green is death’s calling card (feel free to choose your own interpretation).


Stanzas 6&7:
But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

Alright, we’ve reached the final stanzas and they may be the most difficult ones. Death as a broom, well maybe just dressed as a broom. What could that broom be? I think the broom might be circumstances that bring people to death. It laps the floor. What could the floor be? The bottom rims of society- the impoverished, people who have sunken inside themselves- the depressed, the mentally ill. Well, we know that its actively seeking people. The last stanza is really interesting. Its like death is waiting inside hospital cots, or beds where depressed people sleep, it’s waiting to sail these people to where death is waiting dressed as an admiral. Why is death dressed as an admiral? It’s a commander, its been given authority over all the living.

So what can we gather from all of this? It seems like a depressing, grim, rather scary poem by an old Latino man. But,I think we can learn alot from all of this. So, Neruda starts off his poem by letting us know what he thinks is the problem with the human heart. We die going into ourselves, we drown in our own hearts. Death calls us and we cannot resist. We are alone, as the carriers of our dead hearts. We are moving toward death in our silences. As sure as we are alive we will be dead. It’s lurking about looking for people who have resigned themselves to the folding cots. It’s waiting and we can’t resist, it’s the commander. Alright, that’s still depressing. Neruda is right, death is inevitable. We all walk around barely able to interact on any kind of deep level with each other because the only person our hearts are in tuned with is ourselves. We’re drowning more and more everyday as we try to satiate ourselves with ourselves- self-protection, self-awareness, self-esteem, self-help, self-analysis, enough of me already. Sometimes I really think that if I can just figure myself out I can fix myself- but it always just makes me more confused and mentally disoriented. As this happens to our hearts Neruda describes people as walking coffins, almost practicing death. That’s crazy but I think I see it. I see it in people who refuse to take risks, who live vicariously through television characters and spend most of their time on the couch, who feel like it’s too hard and messy to get involved in other people’s lives. What’s the solution? Well, I love this poem because I think it speaks to the modern condition of man. We are a selfish bunch, unknowingly practicing death until we finally resign ourselves to it. Someone once told me that for the believer this world as we know it is the closest we’ll ever come to hell, and that for the unbeliever it is the closest they will ever come to heaven. So what does Jesus say about the inevitability of death?

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
(Gen 2:16-17)

We are in this mess because of man’s rebellion from the authority of God. Man was deceived, he thought that if he came out from under God’s authority he could control his own destiny and his own life. But that is not the case, instead man unknowingly through his rebellion subjected himself to the father of rebellion. So man apart from God is enslaved to sin and satan. His very life he lives in the practice of death, looking out for himself and no one else. He lives in constant comparison, paranoia, fear, strife, self-gratification, and self-protection.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
(Eph 2:1-3)

But God sees us in all of this misery and loves us.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
(Eph 2:4-9)

Christ comes on the scene and lives the perfect life that we can’t. Then He dies taking on all our sin, He suffers what we should have to suffer because of our rebellion and he turns the tables on EVERYTHING. He says that eternal life is knowing Him and God through Him. He says that through putting our sinful rebellion to death there is life.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
(Rom 6:4-14)

What kind of death did Christ die? He died by putting sin to death, and so we follow him in putting our sinful selves to death so that we may be free from sin which is in its essence death. So death is the way, for both the Christian and the non-Christian. The non-Christian unknowingly practices death through his search for life. He does all he can to do the things that will make him happy and make him feel more alive- but his dead heart leads him into self-gratification, selfish ambition, and self-promotion. While the Christian practices what looks like death in his quest to know and love Christ more fully. We die to our rights to ourselves, our plans for our own lives, and we find real life.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
(Joh 12:24-25)