For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!

- <i>Lament for Pasiphaë</i>

When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go.

You can still die when the sun is shining.

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen’s plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last

The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed
uprooted-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

ON THE DAY I DIE

On the day I die, when I'm being carried
toward the grave, don't weep. Don't say,

He's gone! He's gone. Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets and

the moon sets, but they're not gone.
Death is a coming together. The tomb

looks like a prison, but it's really
release into union. The human seed goes

down in the ground like a bucket into
the well where Joseph is. It grows and

comes up full of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here, and immediately

opens with a shout of joy there. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

One who does what the Friend wants done
will never need a friend.

There's a bankruptcy that's pure gain.
The moon stays bright when it
doesn't avoid the night.

A rose's rarest essence
lives in the thorn. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Childhood, youth, and maturity,
and now old age.

Every guest agrees to stay
three days, no more.

Master, you told me to
remind you. Time to go. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

The angel of death arrives,
and I spring joyfully up.

No one knows what comes over me
when I and that messenger speak! — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

When you come back inside my chest no matter how far I've wandered off,
I look around and see the way.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come then, I'll sit up and sing. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Last night things flowed between us
that cannot now be said or written.

Only as I'm being carried out
and down the road, as the folds of my shroud open in the wind,

will anyone be able to read, as on
the petal-pages of a turning bud,
what passed through us last night. — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

I placed one foot on the wide plain
of death, and some grand
immensity sounded on the emptiness.

I have felt nothing ever
like the wild wonder of that moment.

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings

Does sunset sometimes look like the sun is coming up? Do you know what a faithful love is like? You’re crying; you say you’ve burned yourself. But can you think of anyone who’s not hazy with smoke? — Rumi

The night has a thousand eyes
And the day but one
Yet the light of the bright world dies
with the dying sun.

To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.

By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness.

Goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer;