When things were at their worst, IN MY LIFE, and it seemed everyone had abandoned me. My Grandmother, a sage old farm wife, sent me a avery nice card and without making reference to any of the specifics - my divorce – she ended with “This too, shall pass”. Very comforting words, when you think everything is crashing down on top of you. I used them as a mantra, and verily, this too – did pass, and happier (and sadder) days did follow. Leave it to a almost 100 year old woman to put it in perspective.
When my younger brother died, shortly after my grandmother, someone suggested a nice poem by Yeats for the cards that the family sent out as thank you’s. The Lake-Isle of Inisfree…
- I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree;
- And a small cabin build there, of clay and waddles made.
- Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee
- And live alone, in the bee-loud glade.
- And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
- From the veils of morning to where the cricket sings
- There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow
- And the evening full of the linnet’s wings.
- I will arise and go now, for always night and day
- I hear lake-water lapping with low-sounds by the shore
- While standing on the roadway, or on the pavements gray
- I hear it, in the deep heart’s core.
I cry everytime I read that.
Last Saturday, I put my grief, and yeats in a song that I wrote in less than 3 hours. The song was sparked by a line in Yeats poem “Vacillation”. Which mad me think of my brother, my grandmother, and the too many other souls that I knew who had left this place, where we do the best that we can with what we are given.
I think there is an incredible relationship between Art and Grief. I offer as evidence the way this song poured out of me.
