Simplify Me When I'm Dead

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.

As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
"He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.

Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.

Analysis (ai): The poem centers on erasure and objectivity after death, rejecting emotional distortion in favor of rational assessment. It questions the accuracy of memory and the value assigned to a person through fragmented recollections.

Tone and Diction: The tone is dispassionate, almost clinical, using restrained language that distances the speaker from sentimentality. This contrasts with the emotional weight typically associated with elegies.

Structure and Form: The poem employs a loose tercet structure with intermittent couplets and refrains, creating a meditative rhythm. Its form is controlled but not rigid, allowing for philosophical progression.

Attitude Toward Memory: It critiques the unreliability of personal memory, suggesting incidents misrepresent a life. The speaker urges simplification through time’s distorting yet clarifying lens.

Use of Imagery: Natural processes like decomposition become metaphors for reduction to essence. The moon's entry into the sky frames birth and death as impersonal cosmic events.

Engagement with Modernity: Written during the early 20th century’s shift toward realism and existential inquiry, the poem aligns with modern skepticism toward narrative coherence and lasting legacy.

Scientific Language: References to "skeleton" and "type" reflect modern preoccupations with classification and anthropology, treating identity as data rather than story.

Comparison to Author’s Other Works: Unlike some of the author’s war poems, which depict immediate violence, this piece abstracts death into a conceptual exercise, showing his range beyond battlefield reportage.

Lesser-Known Angle: While often read as a request for modest remembrance, the poem also functions as a satire of posthumous reputation—it imagines being reduced to a footnote in someone else’s analysis.

Distance from Contemporary Norms: Unlike wartime poetry emphasizing heroism or grief, this work resists glorification, aligning more with modernist detachment than patriotic elegy.

Author’s Broader Oeuvre: Among his shorter, quieter poems, this stands out for its philosophical restraint, diverging from the graphic precision of his combat descriptions.

Temporal Perspective: The “wrong-way telescope” metaphor inverts time’s magnification, suggesting the future diminishes rather than clarifies, a reversal of nostalgic idealization.

Call for Judgment: The speaker invites delayed, impartial evaluation, contrasting with the immediate emotional reactions common in elegiac tradition.

Final Refrain: Repeating the opening lines reinforces the desire for reduction, framing death not as transformation but as subtraction.

Place in Modern Poetry: It avoids Romantic continuity, instead embracing fragmentation and impersonality, resonating with modern concerns about identity dissolution.

Legacy and Relevance: The poem prefigures contemporary discussions about digital afterlives and how time filters personal significance through minimal traces.

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Like (10) 8 Enjoyed it Nice write Nicely written Like (10)

Likes: Red Rocket, Terry Collett, Piñata Non Grata, timeteller, , Nassy Fesharaki, Julie Dredge88, Ookami.00, Lemoni, Russell Dudley, CloudCover, Tha man

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Older comments

Piñata Non Grata - Perhaps this poem ought to have been 'simplified' by the author of this work in order to make the author's own life more easily heartfelt to remember.

Enjoyed it

on Mar 26 2023 07:20 PM PST

Lemoni - Nicely written!

on Aug 17 2020 06:34 PM PST

CloudCover - just my immediate reaction as everyone agrees it is an amazing write. I think he could have stopped at "deduce from the long pain i bore"

on Aug 17 2020 03:10 PM PST

- I need to find more poems like this, this is incredibly profound and beautiful.

on Aug 18 2017 01:34 PM PST

Ookami.00 - Brilliance in words distancing themselves from the reader to produce this simplifying effect.

on Aug 18 2017 12:46 PM PST

Red Rocket - We remember

on Aug 18 2017 04:29 AM PST

Nassy Fesharaki - we become more conscious and truthful when we look the death in the eyes and see the fact with no cover and no pretension.

on Aug 17 2016 05:43 AM PST

Terry Collett - classic poem.

on Aug 17 2016 02:19 AM PST

Comments from the archive

- In nineteen forty-four, you climbed from your tank
and met that lethal mortar
while I, some thousand miles further north,
slowly, coldly sank,
living, silent, struggling, down through
the neutral Arctic water,
the aeroplane quietly and humbly collapsing around me.

Contemporaries then in our twenties: we lived, you died.
But the simple facts for survivors
are no simplification here for you.
For you are still there.
You live â€” trapped in your life like me in my plane.
You did not pass;
it's we who continued and left you behind. You stopped,
touched your temporal limit
and then withdrew as you, like the rest of us,
simply must,
into your own share of space-time
that is your medium,
your definition â€” your young whole life.

on Mar 25 2007 01:10 PM PST

- From guest Malcolm Piercy (contact)
In nineteen forty-four, you climbed from your tank and met that lethal mortar while I, a thousand miles further north, slowly, coldly sank, living, silent, struggling down through the neutral Arctic water, the aeroplane quietly and humbly collapsing around me. Contemporaries then in our twenties: we lived, you died. But the simple facts for survivors are no simplification here for you. For you are still there. You live — trapped in your life like me in my plane. You did not pass: it’s we who continued and left you behind. You stopped, touched your temporal limit and then withdrew as you, like the rest of us, simply must, into that amplitude of space-time that is your medium, your definition — your young whole life.

on Mar 25 2007 12:38 PM PST

- This poem was read out today 10th July 2005, in London at the celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of second world war. This poet lived then and died then like many other very young men. Never simplify them, remember them.

on Jul 10 2005 10:03 AM PST

- Not Crazy, but beautiful and scary - he was so young and had to think of death as imminent. Brave I say.

on Jun 21 2005 07:22 PM PST

- crazy

on Oct 12 2004 01:54 AM PST