A death is one of the events that prompts those for whom poetry is only an occasional habit to reach for a poem. This may be especially the case if the person has to speak at a funeral. Here’s a poem by James Fenton (1949–) that s good for a funeral and tries to answer the question of what the dead would want from us, the living. They don’t, he argues, want us to “rave or disfigure ourselves,” but there are things they want from us, including “an honoured place in our memory.”

But eventually they will come to terms with us still living as we come to terms with them being dead. We will, the poem says, create “a pact between/Dead friends and living friends./What our dead friends would want from us/Would be such living friends.” I think of the dead friends still in my living life.

For Andrew Wood by James Fenton

What would the dead want from us
Watching from their cave?
Would they have us forever howling?
Would they have us rave
Or disfigure ourselves, or be strangled
Like some ancient emperor’s slave?

None of my dead friends were emperors
With such exorbitant tastes
And none of them were so vengeful
As to have all their friends waste
Waste quite away in sorrow
Disfigured and defaced.

I think the dead would want us
To weep for what they have lost.
I think that our luck in continuing
Is what would affect them most.
But time would find them generous
And less self-engrossed.

And time would find them generous
As they used to be
And what else would they want from us
Than an honoured place in our memory,
A favourite room, a hallowed chair,
Privilege and celebrity?

And so the dead might cease to grieve
And we might make amends
And there might be a pact between
Dead friends and living friends.
What our dead friends would want from us
Would be such living friends.