Need a poem that has the theme about the inevitability of death or the struggle to survive?

Question

I've been searching forever and I can't seem to find one, and I need to write an essay on it this weekend! I have to use it to compare it to the theme of the book Catch-22.

The theme in Catch-22 that I want the poem to parallel is either the inevitability of death or the struggle to stay alive. The storyline does not have to be the same.

Answer 1

"Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas has part of what you want, but he is looking hardest at the death of the old.  

The World War I poets have much to say.  For example, Sassoon's 'The Death-Bed' ends with these lines:

   "But death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went,

   And there was silence in the summer night;

   Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

   Then, far away, the thudding of the guns."

Here's some Rupert Brooke:

   "Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

   Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

   Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

   Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

   But only agony, and that has ending;

   And the worst friend and enemy is but Death."

And Wilfred Owen...

   "It was the reasoned crisis of his soul

   Against more days of inescapable thrall,

   Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall

   Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire,

   Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole

   But kept him for death's promises and scoff,

   And life's half-promising, and both their riling."

LATER:

For the inevitability of death, here is Alan Seeger's 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death.'  He kept that rendezvous, as did all the other World War I poets.

  "I have a rendezvous with Death

   At some disputed barricade,

   When Spring comes back with rustling shade

   And apple-blossoms fill the air —

   I have a rendezvous with Death

   When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

   "It may be he shall take my hand

   And lead me into his dark land

   And close my eyes and quench my breath —

   It may be I shall pass him still.

   I have a rendezvous with Death

   On some scarred slope of battered hill,

   When Spring comes round again this year

   And the first meadow-flowers appear.

   "God knows ’twere better to be deep

   Pillowed in silk and scented down,

   Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,

   Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

   Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .

   But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

   At midnight in some flaming town,

   When Spring trips north again this year,

   And I to my pledged word am true,

   I shall not fail that rendezvous."

Answer 2

just say a poem is about that.  it doesn't have to really be written like that.  you just gotta be able to describe it