Now, we look, out toward where the flowers of Spring
Push upwards from the plush green there on the bank
Beside the lawn that only a month ago I trimmed
For the first time
This year.
Beyond, caught in sunlight, the hills whose treeful slopes
Are greener now I am sad, saddened by a grief born
From her losing:
Such life around - such promise filling this air
With song as birds proclaim both territory and pride
While I, Bach-hearing, resist and resist and resist
That temptation to kneel
As dark anguish heavily descends to cover the life that was my life:
For there is now no God to help as when I the monk
Toiled with my hands, my feelings, desires - until Thought
Surprising me
Took me far from the Monk's Garden, the cloister, that warm Summer -
Took me out, far beyond myself
To where the gods were born.
But, yes, there are tears now, as if the centuries, calling
Held me with the cries of those who long before my birth
Had suffered, cried, mourned, and died -
So many tears, so many, taking me far beyond her loss
To where some future peace, Sun-warmed, and rural as an English Summer,
Waits:
If only - if only I was there, we were there
In that future Paradise serene
Where even my desire, my yearning, becomes stilled
As it was not stilled with her
As I restless even beyond myself despite my best most noble hopes
Filled her with sadness, sometimes,
Until the slim thread holding us in love broke
Breaking her down in a sadness of grief, bent over her bed
Those hours when words failed as words fail
That day of rain and Sun where light from her window beheld her clinging
To the sheets of her bed, her pillow wet in tears.
There was, is, nothing for me to do
I am sorry, so sorry
But live - or try to live
Remembering: for the centuries, calling
Hold me with the cries of those who long before my birth
Have suffered, cried, mourned, and died,
Thus urging me in my remembering to make some goodful godful use
Of the time remaining, here,
Far from that future Paradise
Which might - should - be ours
One day
When the crying
Stops
DW Myatt