She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (17 page)

RAINER MARIA RILKE

She sat at tea just like the others. First

I merely had a notion that this guest

Held up her cup not quite like all the rest.

And once she gave a smile. It almost hurt.

When they arose at last, with talk and laughter,

And ambled slowly and as chance dictated

Through many rooms, their voices animated,

I saw her seek the noise and follow after,

Held in like one who in a little bit

Would have to sing where many people listened;

Her lighted eyes, which spoke of gladness, glistened

With outward luster, as a pond is lit.

She followed slowly, and it took much trying,

As though some obstacle still barred her stride;

And yet as if she on the farther side

Might not be walking any more, but flying.

ELIZABETH JENNINGS

So much she caused she cannot now account for

As she stands watching day return, the cool

Walls of the house moving towards the sun.

She puts some flowers in a vase and thinks

“There is not much I can arrange

In here and now, but flowers are suppliant

As children never were. And love is now

A flicker of memory, my body is

My own entirely. When I lie at night

I gather nothing now into my arms,

No child or man, and where I live

Is what remains when men and children go.”

Yet she owns more than residue of lives

That she has marked and altered. See how she

Warns time from too much touching her possessions

By keeping flowers fed, by polishing

Her fine old silver. Gratefully

She sees her own glance printed on grandchildren.

Drawing the curtains back and opening windows

Every morning now, she feels her years

Grow less and less. Time puts no burden on

Her now she does not need to measure it.

It is acceptance she arranges

And her own life she places in the vase.

SARA TEASDALE

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,

Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,

Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,

Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten

Long and long ago,

As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall

In a long-forgotten snow.

ANNE SEXTON

It is in the small things we see it.

The child's first step,

as awesome as an earthquake.

The first time you rode a bike,

wallowing up the sidewalk.

The first spanking when your heart

went on a journey all alone.

When they called you crybaby

or poor or fatty or crazy

and made you into an alien,

you drank their acid

and concealed it.

Later,

if you faced the death of bombs and bullets

you did not do it with a banner,

you did it with only a hat to

cover your heart.

You did not fondle the weakness inside you

though it was there.

Your courage was a small coal

that you kept swallowing.

If your buddy saved you

and died himself in so doing,

then his courage was not courage,

it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,

if you have endured a great despair,

then you did it alone,

getting a transfusion from the fire,

picking the scabs off your heart,

then wringing it out like a sock.

Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,

you gave it a back rub

and then you covered it with a blanket

and after it had slept a while

it woke to the wings of the roses

and was transformed.

Later,

when you face old age and its natural conclusion

your courage will still be shown in the little ways,

each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,

those you love will live in a fever of love,

and you'll bargain with the calendar

and at the last moment

when death opens the back door

you'll put on your carpet slippers

and stride out.

P
OETRY HAS BEEN CALLED
“the language of the human heart,” and we turn to it when our hearts are breaking. The shock of loss and the pain of grief are physical as well as emotional, and sometimes hard to put into words. Poetry reminds us that these feelings are not unique to us, and by sharing them we can be comforted by our common humanity. Poets face life's most difficult questions head-on and unafraid, and through their work, we find solace and wisdom.

In my family, we have faced a good deal of loss. Each death is different. I know that the times when we have been able to gather at our mothers' bedsides, and hold each other's hands as they pass from life, are a gift we will always treasure. We feel the presence of God. But when we lose someone before their time, it takes the rest of our lives to understand, or to accept that we never will. We can stay connected to their spirit by doing things they enjoyed, caring for those they loved, sharing memories with their friends, and living and working for the things they believed in.

The poems here include matter-of-fact observations about death. The importance of the countless small rituals that accompany death is captured by Emily Dickinson in her famous poem “The Bustle in a House.”

Other poems explore the agony of loss and despair. In “The Widow's Lament in Springtime,” William Carlos Williams describes a woman who aches with the desire to surrender life. However, there are more hopeful poems too, like Christina Rossetti's “Remember,” which urges us not to be held back by the past, but to move forward with our lives.

As I have moved through the stages of grief in my own life, a healing process occurs. There have been periods during which I have wanted to withdraw from the world. Knowing that my mother turned to poetry at difficult times in her life, and reading the same poems that brought her solace, helped me feel her presence and gave me strength. Later, when I was ready to reengage more fully in the world, poetry helped me remember happy times more often than sad times, feel the guiding spirit of those I have lost, and rely on their memory for a sense of direction and purpose.

EMILY DICKINSON

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted upon Earth—

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity.

H. D.
from
Hymen

Never more will the wind

Cherish you again,

Never more will the rain.

Never more

Shall we find you bright

In the snow and wind.

The snow is melted,

The snow is gone,

And you are flown:

Like a bird out of our hand,

Like a light out of our heart,

You are gone.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the mid-night air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud access

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for the Dead in silence like to death—

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe,

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet.

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Sorrow is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turn away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.

JO McDOUGALL

When Grief came to visit,

she hung her skirts and jackets in my closet.

She claimed the only bath.

When I protested,

she assured me it would be

only for a little while.

Then she fell in love with the house,

repapered the rooms,

laid green carpet in the den.

She's a good listener

and plays a mean game of Bridge.

But it's been seven years.

Once, I ordered her outright to leave.

Days later

she came back, weeping.

I'd enjoyed my mornings,

coffee for one;

my solitary sunsets,

my Tolstoy and Molière.

I asked her in.

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Remember me when I am gone away,

    Gone far away into the silent land;

    When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

    You tell me of our future that you planned:

    Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

    And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

    For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

With you a part of me hath passed away;

For in the peopled forest of my mind

A tree made leafless by this wintry wind

Shall never don again its green array.

Chapel and fireside, country road and bay,

Have something of their friendliness resigned;

Another, if I would, I could not find,

And I am grown much older in a day.

But yet I treasure in my memory

Your gift of charity, and young heart's ease,

And the dear honor of your amity;

For these once mine, my life is rich with these.

And I scarce know which part may greater be—

What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

. . .

OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY

But for your Terror

Where would be Valour?

What is Love for

But to stand in your way?

Taker and Giver,

For all your endeavour

You leave us with more

Than you touch with decay!

ARIWARA NO NARIHARA

That it is a road

Which some day we all travel

I had heard before,

Yet I never expected

To take it so soon myself.

ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

XXVII

I envy not in any moods

The captive void of noble rage,

The linnet born within the cage,

That never knew the summer woods:

I envy not the beast that takes

His license in the field of time,

Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,

To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,

The heart that never plighted troth

But stagnates in the weeds of sloth,

Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

WALT WHITMAN

Word over all, beautiful as the sky,

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly

softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin—I

draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

W
HEN I WAS GROWING UP
, all I wanted to do was be
with
my friends, be
like
my friends, and dress the same way as my friends did. We all had the same hairstyle and hair color, and mostly we still do. Growing up in a large extended family also gave me a built-in set of people who still know almost everything about me, and taught me how to be a good friend. If we are lucky, we have close friends who have been part of our lives since childhood or college, and others we have connected with through work or through our children. We share relationship dramas, issues at work, health and mothering questions. Now that my children are mostly grown, friends are the ones I turn to for laughter and comfort. One of my favorite lines is in the poem “Girlfriends” by Ellen Doré Watson, who writes of long-term friendships, “The lifers/who, even seven states away, are the porches/
where we land.
”

Although female friendships are an important part of our lives, there are not as many poems about female friendship as one might expect. Poets seem to be more concerned with love relationships or their solitary pursuits. However, when they do examine the subject of friendship, they distill its essence. One of the most important qualities in a friendship is that it makes each of us into a better person. “A Poem of Friendship” by Nikki Giovanni and “Love” by Roy Croft explore this aspect of friendship. Other poems, like “My Friend's Divorce” by Naomi Shihab Nye and “Secret Lives” by Barbara Ras, celebrate the love and support friends give each other during difficult times.

One of my daughters' favorite poems is the dark and startling “A Poison Tree” by William Blake. Blake was ahead of his time in recognizing how important it is to discuss anger and disappointment with our friends, and the dangerous consequences of withholding our feelings.

Once our children have left home (although they say that never really happens), we look for others to care for. I know quite a few middle-aged women who have fallen in love with their pets—and I am one of them. That is why Elizabeth Barrett Browning, known better for her sonnet “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” is represented here with a poem to her dog, Flush.

And when we run out of friends, there is always “Chocolate” by Rita Dove.