When Death Comes

“When Death Comes” is a poem that deals with how one chooses to live once they realize they must die. There’s an almost fantastical quality to death in the opening stanzas. Death is not clinical or manmade, but natural, a next step in the journey of life.

The poem begins with the speaker being confronted by death, personified as a “hungry bear in autumn” (Line 2). This bear figuratively transports the main character to the Underworld, or the Land of the Dead, where the personified character of death collects “the bright coins from his purse / to buy me” (Lines 3-4). In mythological terms, coins were collected for the dead in order to pay Charon, the ferryman, to cross the Styx, the river that separated the lands of the living and the dead. Death is shown to be final as it “snaps the purse shut” (Line 4), which symbolizes keeping the “coins” (Line 3) and beginning the journey that awaits after life.

The speaker ponders their own cause of death, which is yet to be revealed. The speaker doesn’t know if their demise will be from illness like “measle-pox” (Line 6) or a natural disaster “like an iceberg” (Line 8). Despite the uncertainty of their future death, the speaker does not dread it. Rather, they hope to approach it positively, regardless of the circumstance. They want to enter “that cottage of darkness” (Line 10) with “curiosity, wondering” (Line 9). This situates the speaker into a place of awe rather than fear no matter what form death might take.

Because death is a natural part of the process of one’s life, the speaker decides that they “therefore” (Line 11) must behave a certain way while living. The idea of wonderment is not for the afterlife but serves as a guide on how to explore the present here on earth. In this way, the speaker surveys those around them as within “a brotherhood and a sisterhood” (Line 13). Every person and event becomes both “common” (Line 15) and “singular” (Line 16), blossoming like a “flower” (Line 15). Wonderment also encourages a familiarity with a variety of people so that “each name [becomes] a comfortable music in the mouth” (Line 18). Also, “each body” (Line 19) is revealed to be a “lion of courage, and something / precious” (Lines 19-20). Here, the speaker realizes that human existence is miraculous, which allows them to embrace a sense of humane inclusiveness.

Contemplating again the inevitability of their death, the speaker hopes they have lived in accordance with the idea that every experience and person is “precious to the earth” (Line 20). “When [life’s] over,” (Lines 21, 24), the speaker hopes they will have been committed to being astonished at the richness of the surrounding world and the people in it. They compare their emotions to the way a newlywed feels about their spouse: “I want to say all my life / I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms” (Lines 21-23). Those who are newly married often experience something known as a honeymoon phase, in which everything is fresh, new, and wondrous. They feel the full effects of a love state. After time, this phase fades away as the couple faces life’s reality. Instead of accepting this fading of passion, the speaker wants to actively try to preserve their honeymoon with the world.

As Rachel Syme put it in The New Yorker when discussing “When Death Comes”:

“[Oliver] tells us that wonder has to be earned. Marriages are hard work; they take nurturing and constant vigilance. By comparing herself to a bride, she yoked herself to being amazed; she gave herself the lifelong assignment, however difficult, of looking up (Syme. 2019).

Indeed, rather than focus on the negative aspects of life’s experience where one “sigh[s] and [is] frightened / or full of argument” (Line 27), Oliver’s speaker wants to be wedded to full engagement. By building a life that is unquestionably “particular, and real” (Line 26) the speaker will have made a true home in the world, instead of just “visit[ing]” (Line 28).