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

[kerkevik_2014]

 
   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. 

  Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: 

  If it could weep, it could arise and go. 

  

  

  Goddess preserve, 

  

  Kerk Hiraeth