An afternoon with Frost and Harwood.

This week was marked by a death in the family. Unexpected and deeply painful, but for the young person concerned, a release from what was a challenging life.
I was charged with the task of finding an appropriate poem or extract to read at the service, so I set to work. Of course, the tone is of utmost importance. I wanted something which did not throw a light of depression or sorrow on the passing; instead, I wanted something that showed that our sorrow stems from what is essentially our sadness at no longer having that person in our lives. I wanted it to celebrate his life, I wanted to focus on the silver lining, I wanted to concentrate on the cycle of nature that eventually claims us all and is the source not only of all sadness but of all joy. I wanted, most of all, for the guests to cease to mourn the passing of this person but to remember and cherish the time we had with him and hope, in that way that the living can only do, that he has gone to a better place than this earth. After all, it was Socrates according to Plato who said: "No one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good."


I wasn't sure where to start. I skimmed through Whitman but couldn't find anything that hit the note I wanted - it was all too heavy in that sublime way of Whitman's. Browning offered me nothing, despite being one of my favourite poets for a long time.
Suddenly I thought back to a poem of Robert Frosts - The Road Not Taken.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The tone of peace and the path of life was exactly right - but obvious themes were missing for my purpose, such as the inevitability of death moreso than the active, conscious choices we make during our lives. Nevertheless, it is a poem which never fails to send a shiver up my spine. So calm and reflective...

This was when my stroke of genius arrived - which poet has a beautiful, easy-to-read style of writing, deals with themes of death and the cycle of nature regularly and the talent to capture the fragility of the human condition with maturity and grace? GWEN, of course. Two poems popped into my mind - "At Mornington" and "The Violets". "Father and Child" followed soon after. I knew I had hit the jackpot as soon as I opened the booked and slid my eyes over the lines, magnificent in their simplicity. However, the above mentioned pieces specify the character in question (about to die or dead) as aged and "ripe", using metaphors of dusk and nature flawlessly to imply the natural flow and approach of death. In this specific case, the person in question was neither old nor ripe, and reflections on childhood memories long ago were useless because he died a child.
It had to be something new. I hovered, flicking over the works, stopping when something really shifted the tectonic plates of my being. Finally, I saw it. In Part Two of "Past and Present", the final stanza ends like this:

"I know that joy will come
as a voice in a fugue returns
to enter and alter the texture
of accumulating seasons.
I feel time life and lighten
between the peace of the dead
and the living child beside us
who touches the quick of light.
What is grief but the after-blindness
of the spirit's dazzle of love?"


Perfection.


R.I.P. William, a beautiful soul.