Newly Departed Moving Happily Into Next World Poem by Kathleen Aguero/Dalai Lama, Ted Kooser

American Life in Poetry: Column 517

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

The Dalai Llama has said that dying is just getting a new set of clothes. Here’s an interesting take on what it may be like for the newly departed, casting off their burdens and moving with enthusiasm into the next world. Kathleen Aguero lives in Massachusetts.

Send Off 

The dead are having a party without us.

They’ve left our worries behind.

What a bore we’ve become

with our resentment and sorrow,

like former lovers united

for once by our common complaints.

Meanwhile the dead, shedding pilled sweaters,

annoying habits, have become

glamorous Western celebrities

gone off to learn meditation.

We trudge home through snow

to a burst pipe,

broken furnace, looking

up at the sky where we imagine

they journey to wish them bon voyage,

waving till the jet on which they travel

first class is out of sight—

only the code of its vapor trail left behind.