a friend of mine has a blog which sometimes functions as confession. this week she shared some feelings about being bereft, being alone, being merely a shell. it moved me. not a phrase i use often. moved me. where? how? i am not sure. but move me it did. transported me outside the shell of my own soul and took me to a place where i remembered we are connected with invisible threads. i am because we are. ubuntu. interconnection. our shared humanity.
opening up....letting go.....letting in.....
these seems to be the movements we can't get away from. the overture of the soul.
i was drawn to contemplate the work of a writer i love. anne michaels. she is a poet who, I believe, has known grief. she writes of the holocaust, of bereavement, of loss and loneliness, and of the strands which may only be the breadth of a hair that connect us. she writes about the loss of language. the inadequacy of speech. and the need to give voice to these feelings which threaten to overwhelm and submerge us. she writes about memory and mourning.
Memoriam.
In lawnchairs under stars. On the dock
at midnight, anchored by winter clothes,
we lean back to read the sky. Your face white
in the womb light, the lake's electric skin.
Driving home from Lewiston, full and blue, the moon
over one shoulder of highway. There,
or in your kitchen at midnight, sitting anywhere
in the seeping dark, we bury them again and
again under the same luminous thumbprint.
The dead leave us starving with mouths full of love.
Their stones are salt and mark where we look back.
Your mother's hand at the end of an empty sleeve,
scratching at your palm, drawing blood.
Your aunt in a Jewish graveyard in Poland,
her face a permanent fist of pain.
Your first friend, Saul, who died faster than
you could say forgive me.
When I was nine and crying from a dream
you said words that hid my fear.
Above us the family slept on,
mouths open, hands scrolled.
Twenty years later your tears burn the back of my throat.
Memory has a hand in the grave up to the wrist.
Earth crumbles from your fist under the sky's black sieve.
We are orphaned, one by one.
On the beach at Superior, you found me
where I'd been for hours, cut by the lake's sharp rim.
You stopped a dozen feet from me.
What passed in that quiet said:
I have nothing to give you.
At dusk, birch forest is a shore of bones.
I've pulled stones from the earth's black pockets,
felt the weight of their weariness - worn,
exhausted from their sleep in the earth.
I've written on my skin with their black sweat.
The lake's slight movement is stilled by fading light.
Soon the stars' tiny mouths, the moon's blue mouth.
I have nothing to give you, nothing to carry,
some words to make me less afraid, to say
you gave me this.
Memory insists with its sea voice,
muttering from its bone cave.
Memory wraps us
like the shell wraps the sea.
Nothing to carry,
some stones to fill our pockets,
to give weight to what we have.
Anne Michaels. The Weight of Oranges/Miner's Pond. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997. 20.
if memory wraps us then maybe it can help keep us safe. we remember and we mourn. we also remember and we learn. we hope for new memories, and we make them up as we go. we share our pain with others. so that even this, this grieving, aching, this being bereft, becomes an experience of not being voiceless, not being alone, not being trapped in a place where we cannot make a sound.
i met anne michaels once. she lives in toronto. but our paths crossed at StAnza poetry festival in st. andrews, where i had the privilege of hearing her read. as she signed my book we spoke of grief and writing and longing. she looked at me and seemed to see into me. it moved me.
we wait with the weight of what we carry.
if we are lucky, someone waits with us.
but then i think of aqualung. it's easier to lie.
To bear the weight
And push into the sky
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
And honestly
To look you in the eye
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
To be the one
To be the only one
Someone has to give a lot
Something has to give a lot
And who am I
To give you what you need?
Well, i'm learning
Just learning
Learning how to live and...
To bear the weight
And push into the sky
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
And honestly
To look you in the eye
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
To fill the space
The space you made for me
I try to be the one you want
I try to be the way you want
And maybe I
Could be the one you need
If you'll only
Show me
Show me how to live and...
To bear the weight
And push into the sky
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
And do what's right
When everything is wrong
It's easier to run
It's easier to...
Never have
To look you in the eye
It's easier to lie
Easier to lie
To bear the weight
And push into the sky
It's easier to lie.
opening up....letting go.....letting in.....
bearing the weight of our longings, our losses, bearing ourselves up under the sky... doing all this in company...making ourselves visible...it doesn't come easily. at least not to me.
it's easier to lie.
than be seen.
in my anger.
with my tears.
in my chaos.
with my confusion.
in my mourning.
with my wondering.
a friend gave me a book last week which i can tell i will treasure for a long time to come. it contains one of the most incredible sentences i have ever come across. one of the most honest. the most hopeful. the most devastating. the most reassuring. it's just a comment about life, this
"small, short, surprising, miserable, wonderful, blessed, damaged, only life."
Wendell Berry. Jayber Crow. New York: Counterpoint, 2000. 71.
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