Confronting Death in The Pardon by Richard Wilbur Death is the issue at the heart of Richard Wilbur's poem "The Pardon." This is evident from the opening line: “My dog ​​lies dead five days without a grave.” What is not immediately apparent, however, is that this is not simply a poem about a boy's sadness at the loss of his dog. What Wilbur talks about in this piece is much deeper, cutting through the superficialities of death and addressing fears and doubts that we all experience at different times in our lives. This is a poem about atonement, about facing the mistakes of the past and facing them directly. More specifically, it is about reconciling ourselves with death and all that life's deepest tragedies entail. The poem's adult narrator is haunted by his past, unable to deal with the feelings and emotions he had as a young man. It even seems that he tried to repress a part of his life. However, following a chilling and realistic dream, he is finally forced to face what he thought was buried forever. The realization that comes from this, the realization that death is not something to escape from, is the true meaning of the poem and the crux of what Wilbur is trying to tell the reader. "Forgiveness" can be divided into three distinct parts. The first subsection consists of stanzas one and two, which detail a tragic event that occurred in the narrator's life when he was ten years old: the death of his dog. It is in these first eight lines that the narrator tries to make the reader understand what he felt when this happened. He uses very descriptive words and phrases, providing vivid images of the various sights, smells and sounds he experienced. Tall... middle of the page... penetrating look on death and on the fears and doubts that it induces in all of us. The narrator of the poem is a man who has never been able to face death, starting with the loss of his dog at the age of ten. He chose to avoid it his whole life, rather than try to understand it. It is finally as an adult that a vivid dream leads him to finally face his fears: he sees his dog emerge from the grave and begins to ask him for forgiveness. The dog in the dream can be seen as a representation of his trepidation. Once she is able to face him and ask him for forgiveness, she can finally begin to face the idea of ​​death. Works Cited Jarrell, Randall. "Fifty Years of American Poetry." The third book of criticism. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969. Wilbur, Richard. "Ephemeral." Ephemeral: new poems and translations. NY: Harcourt Brace, 2000.