We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

6.10.23

Remembering Letitia

 

Understanding comes:

why I woke up the other day

with such a sore throat, as if

I had spent hours sobbing;

why I couldn’t get myself

to the memorial service

for a lovely lady I knew;

why I‘ve been in retreat 

and even escape since then,

attempting to silence thought …


and why I’ve been thinking, 

nevertheless, of she who left us

already five years ago (can it be?)

on the same day as this latest 

event which I didn’t attend. I did 

attend hers, and spoke of her there,

and wrote many poems, then 

and thereafter. ‘She is an angel now,’  

we say, of those who have gone. 

For her, that was always true.



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