My sorrows! Lying, listing, listed, sighing!
And yet somehow, they live, requiring,
denying, surrendering, demanding, confusing
soul and psyche, imprisoning heart, which
holds with hands so bone-cold, the remains
of what had been; crumbling memories.
So does mind make of the impossible, some
thing which can be borne, carried forth on
crushed shoulders, held aloft, until the place
is reached, where the burden can be put down;
the offering of suffering can be laid at the feet
of grief, settled on the altar of deep becoming.
So is the Self carved cautiously by time,
so is Life revealed in poignant form, as mine.
http://dversepoets.com/2012/09/13/formforall-basic-sonnet-forms/
My letters! All dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,– he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand…a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! – this, …the paper’s light..
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this…O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
—- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And yet somehow, they live, requiring,
denying, surrendering, demanding, confusing
soul and psyche, imprisoning heart, which
holds with hands so bone-cold, the remains
of what had been; crumbling memories.
So does mind make of the impossible, some
thing which can be borne, carried forth on
crushed shoulders, held aloft, until the place
is reached, where the burden can be put down;
the offering of suffering can be laid at the feet
of grief, settled on the altar of deep becoming.
So is the Self carved cautiously by time,
so is Life revealed in poignant form, as mine.
http://dversepoets.com/2012/09/13/formforall-basic-sonnet-forms/
My letters! All dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,– he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand…a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! – this, …the paper’s light..
Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God’s future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this…O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
—- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If only more of us realised that life is forged in the hard places, not in the easy ones. Perhaps then we'd not waste so much time trying to avoid our pain and instead embrace what we can learn through it. Of course, there is such a thing as too much pain ...
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