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olorielOn our way home from the Christmas party with my parents and family and, afterwards, Jörg's mom, brother and sister-in-law, we stopped at the graveyard and lit a candle on Jessika's grave.
Jessika was the woman Jörg meant to marry until she died, while I was still making my way through high school.
Jessika meant for her ashes to be strewn off a cliff in Scotland, but her mother insisted that it would be laid to rest with her grandparents, and there it is. It means that there is a grave to come to, but it also means that she didn't get one of her last wishes.
As always, the visit proved that my tearducts open far too easily. And I can't help it: Standing there, I can't help but feel a certain presence, like someone looking over your shoulder: 'So you are with my intended now? Are you good enough for him? Are you doing him justice? Can you fill my shoes?"
As always, we talked about mortality and ways of death, of the death of our grandmothers and of Jörg's father on our way home. As always, I couldn't help but get lines from John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning in my head. When Jörg tells about the whole family gathered around his grandmother's bed, wondering whether this was her last breath now or whether she is, after all, still keeping on breathing: Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no...
I love the final image of the compasses: The dead or dying person the fixed foot in the middle, around which the living, the left behind, circle until they reach their point of origin again: How, although the dead one is dead and beyond movement, they still lean to one side or another with the movement of the living. It's beautiful. It's consoling. And although I'm too tipsy to remember all the words, the poem rises up inside me and strikes a chord and another.
When we reached Solingen again, there was a spot check on traffic. Jörg was driving - I have been drinking the wine today - and behaved professionally (he claims that it's all a matter of common sense, but I am sure that the fact that his father was with the police force helps a lot more than mere common sense): Good evening, yes, he'd drunk a glass of wine during dinner, which was when, Christiane, around 8 or 9 during dinner with my parents (which meant, 5 hours ago at that time, and therefore, completely harmless), good heavens no, just a glass. And the young officer, equally professionally, nodded and said he'd believe it, and drive safely and have a nice Christmas.
So home we are, and I found the Donne poem, and wrote this. And now I should go to bed, for the celebrations aren't over, and tomorrow we're expected with my father's youngest brother (along with the rest of my father's family). So, goodnight.
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
Jessika was the woman Jörg meant to marry until she died, while I was still making my way through high school.
Jessika meant for her ashes to be strewn off a cliff in Scotland, but her mother insisted that it would be laid to rest with her grandparents, and there it is. It means that there is a grave to come to, but it also means that she didn't get one of her last wishes.
As always, the visit proved that my tearducts open far too easily. And I can't help it: Standing there, I can't help but feel a certain presence, like someone looking over your shoulder: 'So you are with my intended now? Are you good enough for him? Are you doing him justice? Can you fill my shoes?"
As always, we talked about mortality and ways of death, of the death of our grandmothers and of Jörg's father on our way home. As always, I couldn't help but get lines from John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning in my head. When Jörg tells about the whole family gathered around his grandmother's bed, wondering whether this was her last breath now or whether she is, after all, still keeping on breathing: Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no...
I love the final image of the compasses: The dead or dying person the fixed foot in the middle, around which the living, the left behind, circle until they reach their point of origin again: How, although the dead one is dead and beyond movement, they still lean to one side or another with the movement of the living. It's beautiful. It's consoling. And although I'm too tipsy to remember all the words, the poem rises up inside me and strikes a chord and another.
When we reached Solingen again, there was a spot check on traffic. Jörg was driving - I have been drinking the wine today - and behaved professionally (he claims that it's all a matter of common sense, but I am sure that the fact that his father was with the police force helps a lot more than mere common sense): Good evening, yes, he'd drunk a glass of wine during dinner, which was when, Christiane, around 8 or 9 during dinner with my parents (which meant, 5 hours ago at that time, and therefore, completely harmless), good heavens no, just a glass. And the young officer, equally professionally, nodded and said he'd believe it, and drive safely and have a nice Christmas.
So home we are, and I found the Donne poem, and wrote this. And now I should go to bed, for the celebrations aren't over, and tomorrow we're expected with my father's youngest brother (along with the rest of my father's family). So, goodnight.
AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 10:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 12:48 pm (UTC)I hope that you will always be able to find strength and inspiration in poems.
Take care.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-26 04:56 pm (UTC)