Yang Feiyun, Portrait of a Lady, 1986

Unknown Artist, Altar frontal from Durro (detail of martyrdom of St. Quiricus) , 1150

Ilya Repin, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, 1876

Patrick Dougher, Ethereal III, 2019

The Fury Of Sunsets by Anne Sexton

Something
cold is in the air,
an aura of ice
and phlegm.
All day I've built
a lifetime and now
the sun sinks to
undo it.
The horizon bleeds
and sucks its thumb.
The little red thumb
goes out of sight.
And I wonder about
this lifetime with myself,
this dream I'm living.
I could eat the sky
like an apple
but I'd rather
ask the first star:
why am I here?
why do I live in this house?
who's responsible?
eh?

Wanting to Die by Anne Sexton

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!--
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.

The Stray by Charles Simic

One day, chasing my tail here and there,
I stopped to catch my breath
On some corner in New York,
While people hurried past me,
All determined to get somewhere,
Save a few adrift like lost children.

What ever became of my youth?
I wanted to stop a stranger and ask.
"It went into hiding," said an old woman
Who'd read my mind.
"Swimming with sharks," a drunk concurred,
Fixing me with one bloody eye.

It was summer, and then as quietly as  a bird lands,
The sidewalks were dusted with snow
And I was shivering without a coat.
I had hopes we'd meet again, I told myself,
Have a drink and recall the nights
When we used to paint this town red.

I thought you'd be in a straightjacket by now,
You'd say to me,
Making funny faces at doctors and nurses.
Instead, here you are full of fleas,
Dodging cars and buses
To follow a pair of good-looking legs home.

"And you, Judas," I summed the strength to shout,
"Will you be coming to my funeral?"
But he was gone already. It had gotten late in the day,
Very late—and since there was nothing
That could be done about it—
I thought I'd better toddle along myself.

Billie Holiday, Gloomy Sunday (Hungarian Suicide Song)

Explorers by Charles Simic  

They arrive inside
The object at evening.
There’s no one to meet them.
 
The lamps they carry
Cast their shadows
Back into themselves.
 
They make notations:
The sky and the earth
Are of the same impenetrable color.
There’s no wind. If there are rivers,
They must be beneath the ground.
Of the marvels we sought, no trace.
Of the native girls, nothing.
There’s not even dust, so we must conclude
That someone passed recently
With a broom...
 
As they write, the tiny universe
Stitches its black thread into them.
 
Eventually nothing is left
Except a faint voice
Which might belong
Either to one of them
Or to someone who came before.
 
It says: I’m grateful
That you’ve finally come.
It was beginning to get lonely.
I recognize you. You are all
That has eluded me.
 
May this be my country.

Jean Delville , The cycle of passions , 1890

Jacob Jordaens , Triumph of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange , 1652

Ernst Fuchs, Floating Venus, 1930

The Night Has A Thousand Eyes by Francis William Bourdillon

The night has a thousand eyes,
    And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
    With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
    And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
    When love is done.

The River by Sara Teasdale

I came from the sunny valleys 
And sought for the open sea, 
For I thought in its gray expanses 
My peace would come to me. 

I came at last to the ocean 
And found it wild and black, 
And I cried to the windless valleys, 
"Be kind and take me back!" 

But the thirsty tide ran inland, 
And the salt waves drank of me, 
And I who was fresh as the rainfall 
Am bitter as the sea. 

Drunken Morning by Arthur Rimbaud

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare where
yet I do not stumble!
Oh, rack of enchantments!

For the first time,
hurrah for the unheard-of work,
For the marvelous body!
For the first time!

It began with the laughter of children,
and there it will end.
This poison will stay in our veins even when,
as the fanfares depart,
We return to our former disharmony.

Oh, now, we who are so worthy of these tortures!
Let us re-create ourselves
after that superhuman promise
Made to our souls and our bodies at their creation:
That promise, that madness!
Elegance, silence, violence!

They promised to bury in shadows the tree of good and evil,
To banish tyrannical honesty,
So that we might flourish in our very pure love.
It began with a certain disgust, and it ended--
Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity--

It ended in a scattering of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins,
Horror of faces and objects here below,
Be scared in the memory of the evening past.

It began in utter boorishness,
and now it ends In angels of fire and ice.
Little drunken vigil, blessed!
If only for the mask you have left us!
Method, we believe in you!

We never forgot that yesterday
You glorified all our ages. We have faith in poison.
We will give our lives completely, everyday.
For this is the assassin's hour.

John D. Graham , Head of a Woman , 1954

Hans Dammann , Salome, 1913

Edvard Munch, The Day After, 1894

Edvard Munch , The Vampire , 1900

Charles Picqué , Hebe , 1826