Spent the last half hour decluttering my room. I have had the urge to redo my room in a Japanese motif - earth tones, rice paper shutters, etc. Found this, given to me by a good friend who lost her husband last year. They were deeply in love for 20+ years. This theme has rattled around my soul for 10 months. I am thankful to have come across it so lucidly put today:
At least, my dear
You did not have to live to see me die.
Considering how many things I did that must have caused you pain,
Sweating at certain memories, blushing dark blood, unable
To gather home my scattered thoughts that graze the forbidden hills,
I cut from the hedge for crook the one disservice
I never did to you,–you never saw me die.
I find in my disorderly files among unfinished
Poems, and photographs of picnics on the rocks, letters from you in your bold hand,
I find in the pocket of a coat I could not bring myself to give away
A knotted handkerchief, containing columbine-seeds.
A few more moments such as these and I shall have paid all.
Not that you ever–
O, love inflexible, O militant forgiveness, I know
You kept no books against me! In my own hand
Are written down the sum and the crude items of my inadequacy.
It is only that there are moments when for the sake of a little quiet in the
brawling mind I must search out,
Recorded in my favour,
One princely gift.
The most I ever did for you was to outlive you.
But that is much
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
venessa
| 14-Jun-07 at 7:39 pm | Permalink
That’s a beautiful poem. We as a culture always think that dying is the ultimate sacrifice, almost forgetting the pain of those still living.
When I think about John and I getting old, I sometimes wonder what would be worse, dying first or second? Would depend on how much life we had lived? Hmm.
Suburban Mum
| 15-Jun-07 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
Just beautiful. And what with the news of Liam too, I’m welling up here.
Missy
| 17-Jun-07 at 8:55 am | Permalink
“In my own hand
Are written down the sum and the crude items of my inadequacy.”
This is the line that stays with me for some reason.
jase
| 18-Jun-07 at 9:25 am | Permalink
Missy - that was actually the line that caused me to want to post it. It crystallizes the idea/question that I return to again and again when I look back on our marriage. I do feel more resolved about it than I did maybe 6 months ago though.
bine
| 18-Jun-07 at 10:40 am | Permalink
whenever i visit my dad for a few days and there’s a change in the weather for which i didn’t bring the right coat, i pick one of my mom’s coats or sweaters i didn’t give away. i still find her stuff in the pockets - two essential items were always a handkerchief and a roll of glucose drops. sometimes a shopping list or a pebble, or some seeds she picked off some wild flower she wanted in her garden.
her flowers are all gone now, the foxgloves, the larkspur, the columbine. my father planted roses.