Cold is the country where I grieve,
Standing there to watch my only one fade,
Sending them all the love we’ve shared
In vain hope it will ease her way.
My eyes glitter with glazen freeze;
My heart fragments from forced overfill.
But always would I choose this,
Small pittance for immeasurable joy,
Her worth beyond that of rubies.
What can I find in the night,
When it holds darkness soft like your velvet skin,
Stars that shine like your laughing eyes,
And rain that falls like your sorrowful tears?
But when I look to the moon, I cannot find love,
I cannot find it there, nor anywhere I seek.
So I must return to you, beloved, to look to your heart.
Only when I am there beside you
Do I find love; do I find happiness; do I find peace.
Even in the night.
And does it even matter if this year
My menorah remains on the shelf?
When the memories of all the candles we lit,
A story for each night, a small gift given,
Crowd in every night for eight nights?
This is how we remain a mishpocheh,
Passing these traditions from generations down
And then hand to hand among friends.
Such things cannot be destroyed by bombs or guns.
How many candles would I light this year,
And what would they mean?
When I last kindled just two for Shabbos, I wept.
What used to herald time set apart,
A space made holy by rest and community,
Now fills me with grief and loss.
Quietly, I put my menorah away.
Alone, how can I even contemplate this?
I could not save him, though my family begged.
They thought I had that power, given through the love he bore me.
If I had awakened him from his dying sleep, what would they have done?
He would have been a walking shamble, a ghastly semblance of the man they knew.
His brain destroyed, the basic animal functions remained, and those only for a limited time.
Would they have embraced the figure that emerged from the bed?
Sometimes in bitterness I almost wish I had heeded their command.
I should have walked away,
That afternoon under the hot August sun,
When you held my hand but pushed me away
And pleaded with me to understand.
Your brother stood on the veranda, his gaze a baleful glare.
Your mother wilted in her bedroom under the whirr of ceiling fans.
Your father, the Judge, sat in his customary suit and tie in the parlor.
It was the time of revelation, redemption day for us both.
They should know the truth of us, our love, and the life that we planned.
But you couldn’t. You said the heat made you weak.
It was hot, hot and so humid that breathing seemed like swimming.
Our clothes clung to our skin, and I realized
That the famous Delta girl “glow” was just Southern Nice for Delta girl sweat.
You blamed the weather, the long drive, and everything else,
I knew your family had defeated us and shamed you back into their great proper fold.
I should have turned and not said a word, just driven back to the coast and left you there.
Maybe they would have at least let you live.
But I was young and you were young and we were in love.
How were we to know that this love of ours would kill you?
Sometimes I still think it killed part of me, too.
I left whatever part died with you buried beside your grave,
There in the fertile dirt, the sometimes mud, near the Mississippi river.
I am the one who did not look back.
I did not see you standing there ,
Your hand on the screen door,
Like you held it open for my return.
I am the one who threw your letters away.
I did not read your scrawled descriptions of daily life,
Your address still at our old house,
Like you considered me briefly away on a trip.
I am the one who flung our promise in the dirt.
I never looked down at the line on my finger,
The lighter outline itself still a ring,
Like you retained a connection through my skin.
I do not miss you.
I do not think of you.
I do not remember your name.
I am the one who left.
How many tears are enough for the grief of the world?
Can anyone now say even to themselves,
“I can only mourn for this one loss?”
Your heart will shatter anyway, and your eyes will burn from the salt.
So now when we cry, whenever we cry, let our tears
That flow with the wails of newly widowed women, that run down the faces of dying children, that drip unseen onto the hands of solitary men, and the ordinary ones that we shed from expected loss and unexpected reverberations
Let our tears mingle into one great river.
We cannot come together to stop death. We can at least come together to share our sorrow.
(Tara was formed from the tear of Chenrezig who wept in compassion over a suffering world.
Om tare tutare ture soha.)
Your heart has always had a murmur.
I have heard it whisper to me in the night,
“I love you I love you I love you.”
Though I only had a silent heart,
I would hold you close and whisper back the same.
Now the murmur has become so loud
That I can hear it, hear it even over my tears,
Its message never changing.
I hold you close and whisper back the same,
Now adding some words of my own.
“You can go you can go you can go.”
My heart is no longer silent. My heart is breaking.
Take the pieces when you depart.
Without you, I’ve no need of this heart.
The memory of your love will fill the heart-shaped emptiness,
Not quite a heart but far better than the mere organ,
All that I had before I loved you.
I listen to story after story depicting the beloved
Hear again and again the desperate repeated pleas that beg
Doesn’t this act these words that look mean I am loved in return?
I marvel at the furious storm and the abandon of all measure.
So many applaud this loss of control, celebrate such madness in so many ways,
Even term it holy and divine, casting those who do not succumb as suspect and odd.
I’ve been a listener all of my life, this same tale told many a time.
I tried to mimic it myself but very poorly so gave up in relief.
My impulse is to offer remedy, or at least a caution that the gaudy painted carousel
Looks much different when the fair is closed.
I restrain myself unless explicitly asked.
Most only want a sympathetic ear, warm words of encouragement,
And then a bandage for their broken heart.
All these tools I keep on hand.