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David Adès: Our Griefs
1.
When they were little and not yet anguish
we nurtured our griefs,
we coddled them,
said there, there, things will get better.
Even then, our griefs had no interest
in such reassurances, were self-sufficient.
Our griefs were busy feeding
and did not answer.
They knew us better than we knew ourselves.
How could we know, in our innocence,
that we were already in love with our deaths,
that we leaned towards them
no matter how brutal and senseless?
Who had spoken to us of this,
who had warned us?
2.
Our griefs rent the air.
Our griefs grow millstones
and place them around our necks
sometimes we bend under the weight of them,
sometimes we break.
Our griefs do not have wings,
do not fly away from us,
give us the sad chorus of their lamentations.
The sweat of our griefs pours from our bodies,
pursed, snipped exhalations,
wingless into the ether, into the cosmos.
We do not know what to do with our griefs,
how to abide them,
as we have not known what to do
with all who are deaf and blind to them,
with those moving unshattered through the world,
reckless, impervious,
pursuing their own destructive ambitions.
Our griefs stifle us, await reckoning,
days of judgment.
Worse, they cling, hiss in our ears,
taking in our endless catalogue of ruin,
telling us what we know
but do not wish to hear:
you did this, you did this, you did this.
~~~~
David Adès’s books include Mapping the World and the chapbook Only the Questions Are Eternal. He lives in Sydney, Australia.
Copyright 2024 David Adès
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Like Jim Newsome, I was stopped by “Our griefs rent the air” — but then I said aloud: “Yes, yes, rent. But rent, only. NOT “own”…
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A key point: rent, only. Thanks, Laure-Anne. And the other dilemma that keeps haunting me about the grief of these last few days: there are others than us grievers who feel elation. How do we build a walkway between the two silos, or better yet, find a common place to meet? There’s anticipatory grief in knowing the difficulties of doing so. Animosity and scapegoating are destructive.
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“Our griefs stifle us, await reckoning, / days of judgment. / Worse, they cling, hiss in our ears, / taking in our endless catalogue of ruin, / telling us what we know / but do not wish to hear: / you did this, you did this, you did this.” Words for today.
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Amazing recipe for what grief can be or do. This poem would leave a grief therapy group pondering (healing?) endlessly, line by line, each person coming into touch with their own grief at different points: agreeing, disagreeing, working to understand their situation through the undertow of the poem.
the line which stops me: Our griefs rent the air.
And today many of us have a new grief, a riptide of public grief to swim with or around. Perhaps this poem can help.
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A riptide of grief. Yes
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This poem helps to heal us. I feel wounded by recent events.
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It helps heal me too, or eventually will.
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Wow!
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Yes, wow.
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Amazing poem.
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It really is amazing.
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