Short Death Poem

I mentioned Edwin Arlington Robinson a while back and said that he introduced me to "Richard Cory" but I tended to turn elsewhere in my search for poems. But he did have this one I've always appreciated.

Reuben Bright

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Because he was a butcher and thereby 
Did earn an honest living (and did right), 
I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
Was any more a brute than you or I; 
For when they told him that his wife must die, 
He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, 
And cried like a great baby half that night, 
And made the women cry to see him cry. 


And after she was dead, and he had paid
The singers and the sexton and the rest, 
He packed a lot of things that she had made
Most mournfully away in an old chest

Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.




Like Bukowski's "For Jane" it's a really effective picture of grief with a minimum of sound and fury. If Queen Gertrude's witticism about "methinks the lady doth protest too much" holds true, then Robinson manages to protest so little it's all the more frightening.