kerkevik_2014 | National Poetry Month 2017 #5. Grief by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) (Reply)

It's hard to find the words to describe the sense of grief that is creeping over me; from reading some of the comments in my earliest posts by people who've gone in real life (R.I.P.

woman_of_ ) to comments obviously deleted their lj's in the past couple of days; comments lost now so that I only have my half of the conversation left. I feel real loss most when the comments are about fics or in response to a birthday wish, or some personal post.

I can't believe that I can feel that much pain about something that often seems so ephemeral, but I feel like I'm torturing myself; wondering whether it's worth saving anything. I mean all that wondrous material lost when the willtara yahoo group disappeared; all those wonderful early fan sites gone.

It feels so pointless, yet I cannot stop because Right Now? It feels like all that's keeping me going.

I cannot even find the desire to write. I want to. I still need to. I am writing. But I always stop at some point, and it seems like I know I'm not going to finish it.

So why I posted this...

GRIEF
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.