February, 2010.
Dear Majed,
I am sending you the poem I wrote several years after my
father died. Needless to say, I loved him and think of him every day, as I do
my dear Mum, who died last year. The poem is just as much for her, as for your friends and fellow countrymen, as much for the loss of anyone you love.
My parents were modest, intelligent and compassionate. Like you, they had
both been teachers.
father died. Needless to say, I loved him and think of him every day, as I do
my dear Mum, who died last year. The poem is just as much for her, as for your friends and fellow countrymen, as much for the loss of anyone you love.
My parents were modest, intelligent and compassionate. Like you, they had
both been teachers.
For my father.
All effort, doubt, consideration
are banished to the greater silence,
availing us nothing,
availing you nothing.
Matters you would fix
stray away, undetermined.
The slant intent of your signature
is laid to waste-
though how could we ever think it would be?
The purpose of your thought in that last written instruction,
emphasized as you were failing
over and over again
is kept in the bureau, the mind.
Now has come the yawning, deafening silence,
the relentlessness of a world
going on from horror to horror,
the once-charmed carriage-clock
beating out the dead hour, demented;
a wound-up thing set aside
to carry on its dull duty;
the kitchen drawer roaring
where it used to draw warmly
and the fruitless imperative
of the chaffinch's song.
Everything you loved
we loved too.
Love breaks the heart
when we cannot share it,
crying in mute sufferance,
brimming over the full vessel,
or cracking it, remaining
though the living world
may banish us.
How do we throw love away?
Love to your family and the pupils you teach,
Lou.
