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poetreeI've heard it said that funerals, and the rites of death, are more for the living than for the dead. The dead don't care. They aren't present here anymore, no matter where we think they've gone in the end. The structured rituals of mourning--like wakes and funerals, obituaries and memorials-- are for the living to enact their grief.
That's what I find in these poems: the enactment of grief and the attempt to process it. It's not at all easy to deal with grief, whether for a child, a parent, a friend, a lover, distant family, a pet, someone you never met but felt deeply about. In some cases we grieve people who never existed, as in On The Death of Beth Meacham's Father. However, I think the poem most evocative of grief is Journey.
Journey feels unfinished to me. It is a sonnet, form strictly kept, but the poem seems as though it extends beyond its boundaries. The little details expand into a cloud of generalities, which focuses finally in the last two lines: there will be no answers, and there will be no ending.
Journey
Jo Walton
He has left his bags unpacked and gone
to where the telephone is never answered
letters are not delivered
and there is no net connection.
He will not need his perfect shirts,
his shabby old coat,
or his collection of railway postcards.
He has gone beyond passports and money.
He has soared off the edges of evening,
where there are no stations,
and no one can follow,
down through the shadowed valley.
And our questions will find no answers
and our conversation will have no ending.
The entire sonnet cycle can be found here. I highly recommend it.
That's what I find in these poems: the enactment of grief and the attempt to process it. It's not at all easy to deal with grief, whether for a child, a parent, a friend, a lover, distant family, a pet, someone you never met but felt deeply about. In some cases we grieve people who never existed, as in On The Death of Beth Meacham's Father. However, I think the poem most evocative of grief is Journey.
Journey feels unfinished to me. It is a sonnet, form strictly kept, but the poem seems as though it extends beyond its boundaries. The little details expand into a cloud of generalities, which focuses finally in the last two lines: there will be no answers, and there will be no ending.
Journey
Jo Walton
He has left his bags unpacked and gone
to where the telephone is never answered
letters are not delivered
and there is no net connection.
He will not need his perfect shirts,
his shabby old coat,
or his collection of railway postcards.
He has gone beyond passports and money.
He has soared off the edges of evening,
where there are no stations,
and no one can follow,
down through the shadowed valley.
And our questions will find no answers
and our conversation will have no ending.
The entire sonnet cycle can be found here. I highly recommend it.
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