Skip to content

Scottish Poetry Library

Register/Sign in
Shopping Bag Shopping Bag
Bringing people and poems together
  • Home
  • COVID-19
    • Re-Opening FAQ
  • Poetry
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Our National Poet
    • Podcasts
    • Best Scottish Poems
    • Poetry and Mindfulness
    • Champions 2020
    • Posters
    • Publishers
  • Library
    • Become a borrower
    • Catalogue
    • Collections
    • Ask a librarian
    • Copyright enquiries
  • Learning
    • National Poetry Day 2019
    • National Poetry Day archive
    • SQA set texts
    • Learning resources
    • New to poetry?
    • Advice for poets
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • Exhibitions
    • Venue hire
    • List an event
  • Shop
    • National Poetry Day 2020
    • New Titles
    • Poetry Pamphlet Cards
    • Pocket Poets
    • Scottish Poetry
    • Help
  • About us
    • Our story
    • Our people
    • Our projects
    • Jobs
    • Our building
    • FAQs
    • Find us
  • Support us
    • Become a Friend
    • Donate
    • Easy Fundraising
  • Blog
Shopping BagShopping Bag
Ask a librarian
  • Home
  • >
  • Poetry
  • >
  • John Burnside
  • >
  • Afterlife
Donate Donate icon Ask a Librarian Ask a Librarian icon

Afterlife

John Burnside

When we are gone
our lives will continue without us

– or so we believe and,
at times, we have tried to imagine

the gaps we will leave being filled
with the brilliance of others:

someone else gathering plums
from this tree in the garden,

someone else thinking this thought
in a room filled with stars

and coming to no conclusion
other than this –

this bungled joy, this inarticulate
conviction that the future cannot come

without the grace
of setting things aside,

of giving up
the phantom of a soul

that only seemed to be
while it was passing.


John Burnside

from Gift Songs (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

Best Scottish Poems 2007 Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 the afterlife

About this poem

This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2007. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2007 was Alan Spence.

Editor's comment: 
Like a number of Scottish writers of his generation, John Burnside is not afraid of tackling the big spiritual questions, and he writes with a ferocious and questioning intellect allied to an openness of the heart. 'Afterlife' is part of a sequence on Varieties of Religious Experience. Couched initially in the language of philosophical discourse - or so we believe - it moves into an effortless lyricism - in a room filled with stars - and ends with a quiet downbeat that whips the rug away from under the reader, a moment of emptiness that is yet affirmative - giving up / the phantom of a soul / that only seemed to be / while it was passing. Masterly.

Author's note: 
'Afterlife' is part of a longer sequence entitled 'Varieties of Religious Experience' (after William James' philosophical enquiry into religious ideas and experiences). As the title suggests, it is a short enquiry into the subject of the 'afterlife' - that is, the question of what life there is after the death of a specific individual - me, you, a loved one. It doesn't matter, in a consideration of this poem, whether or not the reader (or indeed the writer) believes in 'an afterlife' (in the usual sense of the word), because this is the exploration of an idea that permeates our mental life, just as the idea of God, or sin, or karma permeate our mental life. We are governed in all kinds of ways by ideas and images and metaphors that we don't officially (rationally) 'believe in'.

What the poem does, to begin with at least, is take the idea of life after death literally - that is, it accepts that, after 'I' die, (say), other people are still alive, and so there is such a thing as an 'afterlife'. This sounds naïve, of course - but the poem wants to ask, is it so naïve after all? There is a wonderful tradition in Spanish poetry where the poet talks about his own death, then imagines his garden (usually it's a garden) continuing without him, being enjoyed or tended by others - and I wanted to suggest that, for starters. I also wanted to have the reader ask questions about who this 'I' might be who is dying in the poem, and what we might mean when we think of a 'soul' continuing into the afterlife. What is this 'soul'? How would it continue?

I am beginning to gloss too much the actual poem and that is something to avoid. Of course, a poet wants to present his or her poem as a room into which a reader can wander, in which they can look out of the window, pick up the ornaments and knick-knacks, look at the pictures on the wall and make themselves at home. In a sense, one could say that the poem is, in this respect, the afterlife of the poet, as he or she was in the making of the poem.

I would say, however, without further exegesis, that this is a poem that I find immensely affirmative - an affirmation of the place death plays in the continuation of life (with a big L, if you like). One might say that transient, individual examples of life die so that the larger story can continue - and in my view that is as much of an afterlife as I would wish for, or could need.

Share this
Facebook
Twitter
Email

Learn more

Best Scottish Poems 2007

edited by Alan Spence
Find out more

John Burnsideb.1955

John Burnside is a poet and novelist whose work explores fundamental spiritual and ecological issues about the nature of our dwelling on earth.   
More about John Burnside

Podcasts

Our audio programme of poets, poems and news for you to listen to.
Listen Now
  • Newsletter signup
  • Accessibility
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton's Close, Canongate
Edinburgh EH8 8DT
Tel: +44 (0)131 557 2876
© Scottish Poetry Library 2021.
The Scottish Poetry Library is a registered charity (No. SCO23311).
City of Edinburgh logo Green Arts Initiative logo Creative Scotland logo
By leaves we live

The Scottish Poetry Library is staffed weekdays from 10am – 2pm and is providing a limited service including postal loans and Click & Collect. For details, click COVID-19 in the menu bar above. Dismiss