Friday, July 23, 2010

Poetry Friday

Juneau will have to wait until Sunday. I'll be gone at a funeral this evening and tomorrow. And I'm not quite feeling up to Juneau yet. So today we will mark with poetry. Today we mark a man who was like an uncle to me. Heck he was more of an uncle than some of my own flesh and blood uncles. And I'll miss him. I'm not ready to see him place in the ground. This is not perfectly appropriate (my apologies Mandy) but it fits with my mood.

Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

2 comments:

Salt said...

It rather reminds me of "Do Not Go Quietly Into That Good Night", but delivered as a mourner, rather than someone who is visiting with someone who is dying.

Cat B said...

I posted a small portion of "Do Not Go Gentle..." when my uncle died about two years ago. I think it was my first Poetry Friday mention.

But you are right. This reminds me of that poem as well, but instead of refusing death, this is refusing burial. I knew I needed a Millay for this one. No one writes better poetry about mourning.