In Memoriam - To be Brave in Grief

10 years.
Already.
10 years ago on this date I learned of my brother's passing.

Source: Dave's Garden, Poems for an Autumn Day by Kathleen M. Tenpas.

Six Years...the Eternal Note of Sadness

This was my brother. Six years ago today, while at work, I received the news my brother had passed away. He was 52. I used to have a brother - and now - I do not. How is that possible? How I could I possibly still be alive knowing this? How do I live each day?

Victorian author Matthew Arnold said it best. He spoke of the "turbid ebb and flow of human misery" and recognized the "eternal note of sadness." The poem Dover Beach says it all, and basically speaks to the very heart of my being each and every day. From the first day I read it for a university class, stunned that someone could so exquisitely and perfectly express "where I live", it never ceases to move me, though years may pass between readings.

Alex was big, and strong, seemingly indestructible. He chased and challenged death many times and escaped, but finally it all caught up with him. You are right, Knatolee, when you say, "in many ways, humans are very strong but in others, we break easily. Life can change so much at any given moment. It's important to enjoy today." But why can't I seem to get that last part?

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

In the Long Ago....

I work with archives, so every now and then I come across a great unidentified picture, such as this one. Who was this young girl? Where did she live? What was her cat's name...all in the long ago...

I Loved Thee, Atthis, in the Long Ago

(Sappho XXIII)
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
And we would often at the fall of dusk
Wander together by the silver stream,
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew
And purple-misted in the fading light.
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,
And the superb magnificence of love,—
The loneliness that saddens solitude,
And the sweet speech that makes it durable,—
The bitter longing and the keen desire,
The sweet companionship through quiet days
In the slow ample beauty of the world,
And the unutterable glad release
Within the temple of the holy night.
O Atthis, how I loved thee long ago
In that fair perished summer by the sea!

William Bliss Carman

A Favourite Winter Poem

Winter Poem
by
Laurie Lee


Tonight the wind gnaws with teeth of glass
The jackdaw shivers in caged branches of iron
The stars have talons
There is hunger in the mouth of vole and badger
Silver agonies of breath in the nostril of the fox
Ice on the rabbit’s paw
Tonight has no moon, no food for the pilgrim
The fruit tree is bare, the rose bush a thorn
And the ground is bitter with stones
But the mole sleeps and the hedgehog lies curled in a womb of leaves
And the bean and the wheat seed hug their germs in the earth
And a stream moves under the ice
Tonight there is no moon
But a star opens like a trumpet over the dead
And tonight in a nest of ruins the blessed babe is laid
And the fir tree warms to a bloom of candles
And the child lights his lantern and stares at his tinsel toy
And our hearts and hearths smoulder with live ashes
In the blood of our grief the cold earth is suckled
In our agony the womb convulses its seed
And in the last cry of anguish
The child’s first breath is born