The Language of Loss. Barbara Abercrombie
FROM Because What Else Could I Do
I alone in a restaurant
and what is left of you at home
in a plastic box on your dresser where
you kept your socks and put your change—
and what will I do at home in my own
house, what will I do with my one
spoon and my wide bed, what
will I do without without
—MARTHA COLLINS
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with the juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song:
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
—W. H. AUDEN
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
—EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called “resources.” People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this “commonsense” vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.
On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest.
—C. S. LEWIS
When you left me
darkness opened
up at my feet
and I froze
just where I was,
robbed of any
destination,
lonely as the man
in a space suit,
or the deep sea diver
who must carry all his air
with him. I can’t
come up too fast
or I will die of grief
blooming like a deadly gas
in my blood.
What is left here
anyway? The hills
rolled out flat
into deserts, the rivers
pulled back into the earth
leaving dry beds cracked
and crazed
like glazed china
hot from the kiln.
I will not bend.
I do not care
what rules I break.
I will stand here
and howl my loss
beneath the stony moon
until even you
will hear me.
—MARY C. McCARTHY
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
—CHARLES BUKOWSKI
I can close my eyes and sit back if I want to,
I can lean against