American poet Jack Gilbert. Photo Credit: The Poetry Foundation
ALONE ON CHRISTMAS EVE IN JAPAN
Not wanting to lose it all for poetry.
Wanting to live the living. All this year
looking on the graveyard below my apartment.
Holding myself tenderly in this marred body.
Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness
wise people speak of, or the modulation
that is the acquiescence to death beginning.
Jack Gilbert (1925-2012) from Monolithos – Poems, 1962 and 1982, Alfred A. Knopf, 1982
Yellow Warbler.Photo Credit: All About Birds
WARBLER
I hold in my hands her yellow wings.
They are what bamboo leaves offer to the rake.
The tiny knuckles of her claws grip nothing.
They are the hands of my mother on her deathbed.
I place her beside the stupa of the fallen daisy,
cover her with a robe of white petals.
There are restraints and they are without fault.
The spirit leaves us slowly, forever.
It is the waiting I try to understand, the quietness of that.
Patrick Lane (1939-2019), Washita: New Poems, Harbour Publishing, 2016
I came across this Jack Gilbert poem a few days ago and it gob smacked me. Reminded me of something the late Canadian poet Patrick Lane once said to a group of us. Words something like this: living your life fully and well might be more important than poetry! Echoes of Gilbert’s line: Not wanting to lose it all for poetry./Wanting to live the living.
Canadian Poet Patrick Lane
Challenging thoughts for active poets. But can’t we have both as poets. Live fully, write boldly and with aliveness? But is there a warning in their words? A questioning: To not let your writing take you out of your life? To make sure your life brings you into your poems. I don’t have an easy answer but I am grateful for what Gilbert and Lane make me question!
Gilbert’s poem also reminded me of a specific aspect of Lane’s poem. Gilbert’s last lines and Lane’s last lines:
Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness
wise people speak of, or the modulation
that is the acquiescence to death beginning.
Jack Gilbert
There are restraints and they are without fault.
The spirit leaves us slowly, forever.
It is the waiting I try to understand, the quietness of that.
Patrick Lane
Neither of the endings for these great poets was easy. Gilbert struggled with dementia and Lane with an auto immune disorder no amount of medical intervention could cure. But the eerie quiet in both of these sets of last lines convicts me. The palpable sense of acceptance. Of not being afraid of death. How to be alive yet accept a modulation, an acquiescence, a quiet of acceptance.
2 Comments
I love Patrick’s poem. It is the equal of Gilbert’s, if not superior. The wonderful line about his mother’s hands.
Beautiful poets transition and presence during this, exit from earth transition