My sweet seventeen-year-old cousin died unexpectedly last night. I'm still in shock about it, but all the same, I want to tell you that this bright-eyed girl from the north country was smart and attentive, patient and funny, a softball pitcher and a break wall diver. She was in the middle of a large and lively family, but she gathered about her a sort of profound quiet presence that, in her absence, feels like a vacuum.
Sometimes I get frustrated with people whose only use for poetry is at weddings, funerals, and graduation days. That "occasional" use of the art seems to come with an amount of opportunism, and also rarefies poetry into something colder than it is, something that won't fit into our everyday hours. And yet, when I am thinking more generously, I understand that poetry, even for the skeptics, emerges time and again as the song to help us make our greatest crossings.
Here is a poem for the crossing of Maria Rose Tuck. There may be more.
Dirge Without Music
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Anna, I am so very sorry to hear this sad news. You and I have never met, but I read your work here regularly and with great admiration. Please accept my best, strongest thoughts.
Posted by: Jim Johnson | June 23, 2012 at 02:16 PM
Jim, that's very kind of you. Thank you.
Posted by: Anna Clark | June 24, 2012 at 11:08 AM