For September 12th

[pjthompson]

WHAT THE LIVING DO

by Marie Howe

 

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

 

---

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My dad would love this. I should send it to him. This is how he feels, I know.

Myself, I feel intensely and viscerally, in a way I never did before someone close to me had died, what a complete gulf there is between the living and the dead. You know how silence wipes out sound? That's what it seems like. The person is so gone. There is no where to reach toward that brings you any closer to them. There are only memories and artifacts.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Well, they are gone, yes. And some days they feel utterly gone. But for me, the borderland is more porous. I can no longer smell their fragrance or touch their skin, and that's really hard, but I can feel them. I know we're not separated forever. I know that what I am supposed to do with that is get on with the business of living, because it's all important, even the clogged drains and the flies, because it's what I'm supposed to be doing while I'm here, learning from it, getting frustrated with it, learning some more, getting angry, learning, finding joy, learning better.

Here's another favorite, kind of a corollary to the other poem:

The City Limits
by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh god, that is so beautiful that it makes me want to fall down and worship and say alleluia for all creation.

when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light ...


and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity ...

And the pairs: air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen....

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE THAT...

I can't even say.

There's a part at the end of A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle's sequel to A Wrinkle in Time, when Meg Murray is singing nothingness into Somethingness, and she's doing it by given the nothing something to be:

be,
be butterfly and behemoth
angle worm and angel host
sea sand and solar system....

I can't remember them all by heart, but some of them...

Oh God, seriously, seriously, this poem you've shared is just beautiful.

(The first was, too, but this one is like an arrow right through me)

Thanks a thousand times. I'm going to save it, and share it.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you love it as much as I do! I weep (at least a little) every time I read it, and I've read it oh so many times. It does go right through one (me).

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I read it out to my younger son, and managed to get to the last verse before tears overtook me and I just had to gasp out, "It's so beautiful, you know?" And he, gallant lad that he is, gave me a hug.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

He is a gallant lad!

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

And I didn't mean in any way to negate or underplay what you said. What you feel is real and valid, and I have days like that. I felt them much more when I was closer to the deaths of my fathers. Time has not worn the edges off the pain of losing them, but it has polished the stone a bit. It's allowed me to catch some of the luminance, in certain lights.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I understand--I didn't take it amiss, or feel dismissed.

I don't feel pain (about the loss, not usually), just separation. But this world is a world of changes, and I believe my feelings and experience may well change.

And even though I feel this profound separation right now, it's not unmitigated. There are still dreams. The dead do come to me in dreams.

So, there's a little porousness there.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

I think it increases with time. When grief is so fresh our receptors are in chaos and it's hard for things to get through. And maybe they shouldn't. Maybe we need time to set this world back on its feet and stumble along a bit before we should tackle anything as challenging as borderlands.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

So beautiful. Wow. Thanks for sharing.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. It's one of my very favorites.