on remembering

For my dearest P and D.
I want to hug you both and make it all go away. But I can't.

In the aftermath of a love so fervid and luminous that you can't, you don't want to, you never think you'll be able to remember a time before he was near - I instinctively feel that only this poem, which revels petulantly, stubbornly, unrepentantly in pain and want, will do. The last couple of lines get me, every time.

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

Or sometimes you move on to a certain curious nothingness that part of you - this niggly little voice - tells you is wrong, somehow unreal, a wimpy facade.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Emily Dickinson

But no - both are not what I want to leave you with. I want to leave you with the memory of the possibility of sunlight and stillness and joy, because some day, soon, you will sit again in a garden of gold and green - and love, and smile. This next piece, if you overlook the WWII references, sets a better tone, I hope -

The Sunlight on the Garden

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold.
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

Louis MacNeice

No we cannot beg for pardon, we cannot beg for the liberty of forgetting. But we seek solace in the remembrance of warmth and joy, and in the knowledge that we gave of ourselves bravely, and that we somehow – miracles of miracles - brought happiness to someone dearly loved.