Arise, New Soul, in Agony
A mourning poem
Between the silence of what never can return, and the ache of what never again will live, a lonely communion lies. Unspeakable grief, impossible of expression, rips open a cave to another world. The opposite of speech, the negative utterances of weight, somewhere connect the soul to one other soul in the same weak state of lost balance, Binding the interior-most essence to another, who does understand. Finding neither comfort nor solicitude in one's own people, in one's own land, Such may be found in the past, or in future lands. This other knows how you suffer, but not who you are. In bitter transcendence, bridging arid floods, a new spirit arises. Beyond grief, a door opens to "Who?". Elverum observed this before a Dutch altar as he whispered broken distinctions of what is and isn't for making into art. But what else could Victor Hugo do after Léopoldine drowned in the Seine? How can the babe she carried onto that boat ever receive a monument and a name? Or shall her unborn remain always unnamed in the immeasurable dimensions of the Primo cerchio, Unblessed, unheld, teaching Attic Greek to cut-off sons and sisters.
