341 Grief poems

• When G died began the midnight panic attacks. He spoke French and English but that didn't help. How the body can betray. It frayed and decayed and then he was removed from it promptly and with force. To begin with, a bit of pressure in the throat. A tendency to choke. And then how lavishly it grew to overtake him. • At the funeral his wife had a gaudy kind of beauty. Sheer and elegant in a champagne silk blouse. And where did he go? No matter where on this earth and you could never find him. Flowery and young came the mourners, like bridesmaids. G would have liked it that way. Stilettos and stockings. The curves of the widow sleek and sublimate in blacksilk pants. Elsewhere people went shopping or to the movies. We drove to the crematorium. I can only hope so many beautiful women come to my funeral, M said. • Just at the moment when the person has disappeared forever they tell you he's alive forever lucky him. The church hushed dark a ruin and all of us inside it. (The city's a brute the sky is a brute though the day is calm and clear and mild strain to comfort console but there's no dispersing this. O incidental fragile beloved one, chance of recovery none.) • The city of Paris has you in mind tonight— Let its bridges lift you up. Let the city of Paris write you a letter, the men of Paris open their windows, tending their gardens of giant snapdragons. Let the city perceive you. It is infinite and slow, it will have you back. The beds of Paris are made for you, the city of Paris is sending you steak and water, wine and eggs, it has cafés for you, a broad-flowing river and many crossbreezes. When vaulting under, when the body has shown you its foul airless destination, let the Saint-Sulpice declare living and visible your clever spirit your kindness. The tables of Paris will give you food here are some macarons pink-sweet with jam. (Rude-blooming the flowers of Paris as if snout to blossom could uncover could reinvoke.) • How is it to have a body today and walk in this city in the sun, a bit shocked to find ourselves actually here with books and teacups and ghosts and time ample, a slow greedy feast. If there's no one to walk with all over this city you can go to the movies can hurry stop buy a bunch of lavender, a book, pastry be someone distinct true personal and new. The mind rivers out, angle by angle. He was sick and now nowhere and soon the cities and soon the planet and yet the decadence and festivals boys running, couples swooning on the bridge. Tonight G's attached to a city, where I carry him along in my head, ordering dinner, sitting in the square drawing the sheet up over the body that happens now to be lying there. • How emptily the time goes, how rosé. The waiter, he had a frank stare. He wanted to be admired and I admired him. In the café everyone was alive. Everyone was eating, the garden full and flowering wet and pleasure-dome the earth the days go on and G not and G just and how can a person and now one less and she crumpled thing now as if each were an original grief now gather here and look. (Everyone this summer is obsessed with Michael Jackson. A cold place in the center feel it. In central Paristhe French are saying "moon walk.") • I drank the tiny coffee but it didn't work tried the pills that are supposed to make you happy the pills that are supposed to make you free. The man on the corner is a flasher his skin bright blue. In front of the Métro grandpa is dancing. When he looked up there were so many cracks in the sky. • Walked until the caffeine wore off. Until the buzzing stopped. Walked. Food everywhere and everywhere people putting it into their mouths. Butter and cream, fruit and sugar, coffee and wine. People on the island swirling gelato. The private inner sweetness. When the rain comes down you can feel less lonely. You can feel cozy even shut alone into your private room. When the sun comes out it's a disappointment. Who on earth can live up to it. The days go on despair and elation in alternation. Blazoned swinging moods so big they bewilder. And what is the arc of life. And up ahead nothing. On the other side what. • The city says just live with the mystery don't fight it. This is your life, life using you. The great diminishment coming— You're not the only one who feels it. It's not like you're any more mortal now you were always mortal. So try a moment of lightness like when the red bird appeared on the terrace and it wasn't mystical wasn't anyone returning just was • The old man in the wheelchair smelling of garlic the little dog in the grocery cart the homeless dog and his homeless owner the dog's sad-looking face he stays all day in the grocery cart the sympathy one feels for a dog helpless in his dog life the sympathy one feels for a man helpless in his man life for the grey cat leashed to the fire hydrant the sympathy one feels for a woman alone at the dinner table. In the hot courtyards Paris lowered its awnings. It's hard to walk in a skirt in this weather the wind catches you. A gradual slowing and she turned transparent just a window, just a sensation of walking, a blister.

at my kitchen sink, the bathroom upstairs clogged with family from out of town spending the night after the wake and the after—wake—cold beverages have been consumed and comfort food, leftovers bulging both the fridge and the mini-fridge. In our fifties, both half-asleep half-awake, we face each other. My sister's smile foams white down her chin at the end of a day on which no one has smiled. We laugh. We may never brush our teeth together again. No mirror down here to see our haggard faces. We rinse, we spit. As we were taught.

Ruth visits her mother’s grave in the California hills. She knows her mother isn’t there but the rectangle of grass marks off the place where the memories are kept, like a library book named Dorothy. Some of the chapters might be:Dorothy: Better Bird-Watcher Than Cook; Dorothy, Wife and Atheist; Passionate Recycler Dorothy, Here Lies But Not. In the summer hills, where the tall tough grass reminds you of persistence and the endless wind reminds you of indifference, Ruth brings batches of white roses, extravagant gesture not entirely wasteful because as soon as she is gone she knows the deer come out of the woods to eat them. What was made for the eye goes into the mouth, thinks Ruth to herself as she drives away, and in bed when she tries to remember her mother, she drifts instead to the roses, and when she thinks about the roses she sees instead the deer chewing them— pale petals of the roses in the dark warm bellies of the sleeping deer— that’s what going to sleep is like.

That was not the summer of aspic and cold veal. It was so hot the car seat stung my thighs and the rearview mirror swam with mirage. In the back seat the leather grip was noosed by twine. We were not poor but we had the troubles of the poor. She who had been that soft snore beside the Nytol, open-mouthed, was gone, somewhere, somewhere there was a bay, there was a boat, there was a scold in mother’s mouth. What I remember best is the way everything came and went in the window of my brief attention. At the wake I was beguiled by the chromium yellow lemon pies. The grandfather clock’s pendant of unaffordable gold told the quarter hour. The hearse rolled forward over the O’s of its own surprise.

I say to the named granite stone, to the brown grass, to the dead chrysanthemums,Mother, I still have a body, what else could receive my mind's transmissions, its dots and dashes of pain

Today the sun rose, as it used to do When its mission was to shine on you. Since in unrelenting dark you're gone, What now can be the purpose of  the sun?

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

In the road, a dog. Days dead, that dog. Liliana was walking beside me awhile (I am sure) and I was almost not crying but then found what I was looking for. She heaved it for me—all of it, the stench, the weight— in her thin arms until it was too much. Tired, she dragged the thing by its wasted paws all the way home. Her dress was stained. This is how I learned about love. She did not mind at all the silent, steady distance I placed between us.

You perished, in a toyland, of surprise; and only I am here to bury you in dessicated tulip tips and eyes of broken diadie-dolls. Poor pink, poor blue! Will you be grown when I’m in Heaven too? Will length of death have turned you Classical like old Bisque faces, keen and sainted view, pearl on your breast, pearl-pointed linen shawl? No, you’ll still have your flowers with no stem, and harp, clear stringed, the blur of La Boheme. You’ll heap upon that Mansion’s mantlepiece impossible plush animal creations, and pout the pillared City’s aberrations. You rest a Classic, but of Wedgewood’s Greece.

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.