The Thing Is
by Ellen Bass
(published in her 2002 book, Mules of Love, BOA Editions)
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weighs you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body understand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Even if the only good thing about this poem were the phrase, "an obesity of grief," I would still love this poem. Happily, there are other things to love as well.
As with Wednesday's blog poem, this is another poem of hope and awe and resilience, although Bass' poem is focused on reacting to a specific instance, that of grief. Anyone who has ever dealt with a deep, seemingly eternal grief will understand all of her metaphors. Bass describes grief as fragile, dusty, thick, heavy, liquid, and fleshy--a lot of descriptors and many contradictory ones.
But that is grief. In its throes, we are both frozen in place and yet we are also ping-ponging everywhere.
The poet also captures the way grief feels as a physical thing; we are not just mentally, emotionally, and perhaps spiritually mourning, but our bodies are also reacting. In line 11, the speaker asks, "How can a body understand this?" but this entire poem has already alerted us to the physical nature of grief, starting with the 2nd line ("when you have no stomach for it". Here, the "it" refers to life, but the poet has introduced a body word--stomach--this preparing us for the physicality to come.
Ultimately this is a poem about not just carrying on, but really living. That beyond grief, we must learn to love life again, even though "everything you've held dear/crumbles like burnt paper in your hands." I love the metaphor here at the end as well--we must face the rest of our lives, and Bass describes that as imagining life as a face and promising life that we will love it again.
Holidays can bring grief to the surface, which made this poem seem particularly relevant to me. But also, we are at the end of one year, heading into an uncertain future. Things seem a bit grim (or a lot), so I thought a poem with some hope in it (again, see Wednesday's poem as well) was very necessary.
Have a wonderful New Year's Eve, and I will have another poem on the first day of 2025!
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