‘What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men …… That is what love looks like.’ - St. Augustine

Friday, June 24, 2011

Grief


Sometimes, oftentimes, we cannot find words to articulate the lonely place our hearts are visiting. Sometimes, it can only be spoken with heaves and sighs and deep, deep sobs. That is where I am this night....on this eve of terrible news, and after weeks of an ever-increasing darkness that seems to be pursuing me like an ardent lover.

So I do only what I can -- I beg for your prayers and speak through others' more eloquent utterings. Shakespeare himself says we must give sorrow words:

'The grief that does not speak

whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.'

and so...

The Moon and the Yew Tree

BY SYLVIA PLATH
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky——
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness——
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.


I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness—blackness and silence.


4 comments:

  1. My dear Immortal Diamond: my love shines out to you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Praying that you'll feel sheltered under the wings of God tonight, and have the courage to dig your well of strength a little deeper in the morning.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Worried about you--will be watching, to read whatever you decide to share.

    You are loved. You are beloved.

    Praying as I type,

    blessed

    ReplyDelete

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