Today was hard. It is the anniversary of both Helen’s passing and of Dad’s funeral. I still love them and miss them both enormously. They are both still part of me, and always will be.
Photo by Joanne Van Leerdam: A rose from Helen’s funeral.
I tried to stay busy and keep my mind on other things. That only works to an extent: the knowledge and the memories are always right there, whispering into every moment and activity.
Poems like this help me to remember and they help me to heal and keep going. I love the beauty of the language and the power of the ideas and message.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short adate; Sometimetoo hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, And everyfairfrom fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing courseuntrimm’d: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thouow’st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18
This sonnet is popularly believed to be a poem of love and admiration. That may be a fair interpretation of the first two lines, and I suppose that might be as far as some people read.
I have been contemplating Shakespeare’s 65th sonnet this weekend:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o’ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 65
A year ago today, I was sitting beside my father in the last days of his life. Three days later, it was my beloved cousin and friend Helen whose hand I was holding as she, too, fell prey to time and mortality.
Saying my final farewells to them both in the space of five days was certainly a “wrackful siege of batt’ring days”. I wrote poetry and reflections to both express and process my thoughts and feelings. I wanted people to know how I felt. I wanted people to understand who both these jewels were and why they would always matter, despite their having been being reclaimed from this life.
I learned more about grief, and I learned more about letting go. I had no choice, because there is no human hand or will strong enough to hold back the relentless march of time and mortality.
This sonnet expresses a reality of life: nothing can withstand the relentless power of time. Erosion, degradation, and decay overwhelm not only the frail, but also the mighty. True, rocks and brass may outlast flowers and flesh, but they too will yield eventually.
It is a poem of contemplation and resignation, but also one of defiance: time may be relentless, and there may be no way to “hold his swift foot back”, but one who is immortalised or memorialised in ink lives on, albeit in a different way. We can continue to remember and honour them, and to express our love for them. Our memories and mementos remain long after those who have fallen prey to time and mortality.
In Shakespeare’s time, they had fewer options for immortalising those who passed away than we do. They had eulogies and poetry – the black ink in which “my love may still shine bright”. They could create drawings and paintings. Now, in addition to those, we have photographs, video, and voice recordings.
Poetry and eulogies still touch our souls just as powerfully, though— whether written in the 21st century or the 16th, our written tributes and reflections endure and move us still.
Some of my own black ink, in which my love shines bright: Old Man written for my father Farewell, My Friend written for Helen
It hurts when someone who we think should love and/or appreciate us does not. It’s also a fact of life that not everyone is going to like, appreciate or love us. After all, we don’t like, appreciate or love absolutely everyone else, do we?
This poem expresses the truth of that, but also adds a positive spin: when we accept that and grow through it, we become stronger. When we are true to ourselves, we find the people who do love and appreciate us, and they become our tribe.
Family isn’t just who you are born to, or the people connected to that group in one way or another. Sometimes, the best family is the one you find while being the person you are meant to be.
How ironic That you don’t like it When I stand up for myself: You’re the one Whose weapon words Gave me real-time training In the art of self defence. Had I not learned To deflect your contempt And resist your hateful words, I would not be here today.
You prompted my resistance, Inspired my defiance, And forced my indifference To anything else you have to say.
So thank you, I think, For helping me become someone others like Infinitely more than you do.
Today, I am juggling the mixed emotions of finally reaching the end of a traumatic year, and knowing that the ticking over of a clock, or the turning of a page of the calendar, doesn’t actually make a miraculous, instantaneous difference?
What else does one do with all of that but turn it into a poem?
I wrote this poem a while ago, but it seems so relevant at this point of 2020. Every time my Christmas fairy lights flick on lately, I think of this poem.
It’s the time of year when people want me to attend parties and end of year gatherings for work or other groups. They want me to sparkle, but I feel as though I am still so tangled and frayed and broken, I just can’t.
Yet again, I find myself ‘faking normal’ and smiling and nodding while wishing I could go home and go to bed instead. It’s a well-practised skill that, quite honestly, I wish I had never had to learn in the first place.
Hence my choice of new Christmas decoration, hung lovingly on my tree in honour of the mess that 2020 has been.
It’s fair to say I enjoy this bauble far more than I have enjoyed this year.
My father and one of my closest friends recently passed away within five days of each other. In fact, Helen died on the afternoon of Dad’s funeral. It was too much loss. It was too painful. It was definitely too soon and too final. And “upside down” is exactly how I felt then and still feel now.
As always, my feelings have turned into poetry.
I wrote this poem on the morning of Helen’s funeral. It was impossible to contemplate one without revisiting the other in my mind.
I really enjoy the story of Beowulf. I read it with my Year 9 students in English, and we explore the ways in which the poetry and storytelling are similar or different to the ways in which things are done now.
That’s why I was excited to learn of the existence of The Seafarer, another AngloSaxon poem of similar vintage, which was almost lost to history for all time.
It, too, is written in Old English, and uses similar devices of imagery and poetic narrative to those found in Beowulf, such as kennings and alliteration. This poem, though, reads more like a dramatic monologue than an epic heroic adventure, and is far more religious and deeply spiritual than the secular, wildly fantastic and, at times, quite superstitious story of Beowulf.
What treasures these stories and poems are – snippets of the past that have survived the centuries despite the best efforts of warring tribes and religious authorities alike to destroy everything that stood between them and the power they sought over Britain and her people.
You can read Dr Oliver Tearle’s thoughts on the poems at the Interesting Literature blog. It is to this blog that I owe my thanks for drawing my attention to the poem.
Two years ago, it was my town threatened by bushfires. It was my community losing homes, livestock, and family farms. Now, it feels as though half the country is burning, or has already burnt down.
The horrific and disastrous bushfires this summer have triggered so many feelings and memories. I remember how gut-wrenchingly awful it was then, and cannot comprehend the exponential scale of the current catastrophe my country is experiencing.
I took this picture today. Even hundreds of miles from the fires, western Victoria is blanketed by a pall of smoke.
Like then, I have friends who have lost everything except the few things they managed to take with them as they evacuated. My heart breaks for them, but I am so incredibly thankful they got out when they did.
I feel so useless. It seems as much as one donates and supports and cries and prays for an end to the fires, it never feels like enough.
Add a few layers of grief, empathy, and occasional despair, and you get something of an idea about how many Australians are feeling at this point.
I wrote this poem, and a number of others, in the aftermath of the St Patrick’s Day fires of 2018. It seems an appropriate poem to post at a point where a large proportion of eastern Australia is either on fire, has burnt, or is blanketed in acrid smoke.
It is a recollection of an actual conversation among locals in my town back in March 2018, and bears witness to the resilience and the empathy of Australians in the face of adversity.
This poem is included in ‘Smoke and Shadows’. All profits from the sale of this book between January 1 and June 30 are being donated to ongoing bushfire relief.
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